Advance Guardrails & 3T

As mentioned above Advance Guardrails (AGR’s) came about as a means to comply with impending legislation to protect operatives whilst building and dismantling scaffolds and towers. A variety of scaffold AGR’s appeared in the run up to the introduction of the WAHR and one of these was adapted by Turners to work with mobile towers. It had temporary, telescopic guardrails which were moved up the tower as the build progressed with permanent guardrails being fitted afterwards. This double action resulted in a relatively expensive product and a slower build time. It did however have a dramatic impact on the market and stimulated other manufacturers into addressing this problem. Subsequently there have been a number of permanent fixed frame units that remain in situ throughout the life of the tower thereby saving on assembly and dismantling time. The arrival of advance guardrails at around the time that the Working at heights Regulations were being drafted encouraged the HSE to put pressure on the tower industry to improve build methods. Once again PASMA came to the aid of the industry inviting all members to stage a demonstration of their individual tower building methods in front of the HSE at the Alto Tower factory at Redditch. Out of this came the development of the Through the Trap or 3T build method. The writer having attended the demonstration well remembers being invited by the HSE to “choose a cell” if he refused to update his assembly guide to reflect the agreed new build methods.

PASMA subsequently arranged another demonstration day at the Abru factory to settle a series of intercompany wrangles about the relative merits of the two build methods.