16.07.2013

The old tube and clamp

Spotted yesterday on the Edgware Road in London, UK, a traditional tube and coupler façade scaffold going up.

The team have clearly done this before and all know exactly what they are doing, however that ladder positioning looks less than ideal, with its base in the street, no one footing it and tricky exit to platform. Possibly worse than that is the fact that the poles and planks are out in the busy road, which is already obstructed by a couple of vans parked opposite, forcing traffic to stay close to the scaffolders.
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Two vans opposite prevent passing vehicles from giving these guys a wide berth

It wouldn’t take a great deal for a passing bus or truck to clip the materials and bring one or two of these guys down more rapidly than they would care for. Although one assumes that they survived OK to throw the dice again tomorrow.
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Clearly this team know what they are doing, one wonders though what a passing HSE inspector might have to say?

One wonders that scaffold such as this is still used in central London for such a simple job, one would have thought that the labour and safety benefits of system scaffold for what is a relatively straightforward application, would have been more cost effective?
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The materials are stored in the road, although they are kept close in

While not the most dramatic example we will pop this into our Death Wish series