Pinnacle Safety and Training Blog

Incorrectly placed harness tags can kill!

It’s a requirement under Australian Standards that all height safety equipment, such as harnesses, are inspected and tagged regularly. However, placing the tags in the wrong place can kill.

Have a look at the photos below. Can you spot the issue? That’s right - the green tag has been attached to the hard attachment point of the harness (the major clip-in safety point). The second image demonstrates the problem with this. It is possible to mistake the tag itself as the attachment point which will then fail when loaded. This is particularly the case for rear attachment points, which are hard to see while being worn.

Inspection tags should always be placed on parts of the harness that can never be mistaken as an attachment point. Ideally, they should be a design that does not allow for the passage of a carabiner.

Australian Standard 1891.4 requires all height safety equipment, such as harnesses, lanyards, static lines, fall arrest equipment etc. to be inspected at intervals not exceeding six months by a competent person.

What is “a competent person”?

This is not defined specifically in the Standard, however industry maintains that a competent person is one who has received, and is current in, the appropriate units of competency pertaining to usage of harness-based PPE. It must be amply demonstrable that this person has the depth of experience to ascertain the condition and safety of harness-based PPE. For example, it would be difficult to prove that an everyday worker with a standard Work at Heights ticket has this level of experience, while it would be easy to demonstrate that a current ARAA Rope Access Operator with hundreds of logged hours possesses the required assessment skills.