Tower Safety Week success

PASMA is celebrating a successful Tower Safety Week 2015.

The week of events ran from 2 - 6 November and enjoyed the support of PASMA members from the UK, Ireland and even Dubai. Taking as its theme 'work smarter and safer at height', it also attracted backing from Hire Association Europe (HAE), the International Institute of Risk and Safety Management (IIRSM) and Working Well Together (WWT). In addition, it raised £1959 for Cancer Research.

The safety and flexibility of towers was the principal theme of Tower Week, and was explored through many different events and activities. Making a start to the week was the Tower Week Launch Webinar, which featured PASMA’s technical director, Don Aers, together with John Bungay, vice chairman of PASMA council, sharing their tower knowledge and expertise.

Each day it featured benefits of different types of mobile access towers. Starting with low level access using pulpits and podiums, Tower Week then turned the spotlight on one-man towers, followed by narrow towers, standard towers and, finally, advance configuration towers such as towers on stairs and bridging units.

A group of high-flying PASMA members also signed up to the latest addition to the campaign, the High Tower Challenge. Using the figures they supplied, PASMA added up the total height of all the towers assembled over the course of the week and compared it with famous landmarks - almost reaching the top of Mount Olympus.

As in previous years, the online Tower Week test proved to be extremely popular and was attempted by hundreds of users keen to check their basic knowledge and understanding of mobile access towers. With the emphasis very much on safety and best practice, only a select few people succeeded in getting every question correct and were rewarded with a Tower Week pack containing pocket cards, posters and information leaflets.

With thousands of towers in daily use up and down the country, users took the opportunity to put themselves in the picture and send in a tower selfie. The winner was Bekka Batchelor from Chelmsford-based and approved PASMA training centre, Mark One Training. A special Staff Choice Award also went to Tees Valley Wildlife Trust for the inventiveness of their enthusiastic selfie.

Each day during Tower Week, PASMA published special articles to coincide with a featured tower. These included 8 things you should know about one-man towers which covered everything from their design, advantages and benefits, to who uses them and for what applications. In every case the articles focused on safety and best practice and signposted the reader to the relevant product standards - British and European standard BS EN 1004 in the case of one-man towers. In case you missed it, you can still read these articles by visiting the dedicate website: towerweek.pasma.org.uk

PASMA chairman, Carl Evans, said, “Mobile access towers are a safe, versatile and flexible way to work at height in many different kinds of environment. This year’s campaign has shown what can be achieved using towers and provided a broader understanding of their application.”