08.07.2015

Powered access to the rescue

Two truck mounted lifts were called to a job site in Dusseldorf, Germany yesterday after collapsing masonry threatened to bring down a façade scaffold.

The scaffold was up against a wall of a community centre, when a large section of brickwork separated from the block work behind and pressed against the scaffold, threatening to push it off the wall and into the street below.
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The collapsing brickwork was forcing the scaffold away from the façade

The two truck mounted lifts, with working heights of 25 and 30 metres, were called in from local rental company Gerken. The platforms were used to take the recovery team up to the work zone and also placed against the scaffold to help prevent it peeling away from the wall and collapsing. The lift operators remained at the ground controls, due to the nature of the work involved.
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In places the brickwork had collapsed onto the scaffold

However they had to stop the work team from loading the platforms up with the fallen bricks. And then at least one of the work team not only left the platform but straddled the guardrails to gain extra height.

As a result the operators called a halt to all work, and demanded a full safety briefing and the agreement of a safe plan of work, before they would continue. All was agreed, with the bricks being thrown down to the ground and the team members working from the scaffold platforms or from a point properly within the platforms of the truck mounted lifts.
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After having tried to load the fallen blocks into the platform one of the workers straddled the guardrails causing the operators to suspend work

The job was completed with in the hour and as our correspondent said – “without drama or circus antics”. Thank goodness that this time there were experienced operators around to prevent the Death Wish methods of those carrying out the work.