18 of 24 - Roofing Safety

Before the age of composite panels, industrial roofing was a careful choreography. Each layer—liner, spacer, insulation, top sheet—was placed by hand, aligned to steel purlins that run like ribs across the skeleton of the warehouse. It was slower, riskier, and demanded a kind of spatial fluency that modern systems have all but erased.

To remain relatively safe roofers walked the purlin line —heel to toe, fix to fix, this was the rhythm of roofing. On built-up systems, you didn’t step on the liner sheet because it flexed like a drumskin and held nothing but air beneath. You stepped where steel ran and adjusted your stride to fit the purlin spacing.

An accident occurred on an apparently routine job. A twin-skin old style roof construction. The upper roof had just stepped down to a new level, with closer purlin spacing to account for possible snow drift loading. No one marked the changed spacing. No hazard triangle on the drawing. No mention of it in the induction. No note in the day’s briefing. The site manager hadn’t flagged it. The foreman hadn’t emphasised it.

A young roofer, fast and sure-footed, accessed the roof at the step-down level. Found his rhythm on the purlins. But the spacing changed beneath him. A longer gap. He stepped where he thought the next purlin should’ve been. It wasn’t.

The liner gave way beneath him and he fell. Nine metres down. Onto concrete. Two broken ankles and a smashed pelvis. He was very lucky to survive the fall.

I walked the roof the next morning. Measured the spacing. Marked the fall point. Took photos of the torn sheet, the boot print half on, half off. Interviewed the foreman, who said nothing for a long time. Then: “He always walked the line.”

It was a CDM failure. The designer should have flagged the hazard with a triangle on the drawing. The site manager should have made note. The roofer’s induction should have mentioned it. The day’s briefing should have emphasised it. The foreman should have enforced it.

We added a clause to the method statement. Mark all purlin transitions. Brief the crew. But it felt like paperwork chasing a shadow. The rhythm of roofing was muscle memory. When it broke, the body followed.

Net gains

Industrial roofing accidents remained a persistent feature in national statistics. The challenge of providing leading-edge protection—safeguarding roofers while still allowing access to fix materials—led to the adoption of cumbersome purlin rail systems. These systems, though well-intentioned, introduced hazards of their own: requiring operatives to lean precariously across roof voids or wrestle with jammed work platforms.

Risk assessments grew increasingly complex, particularly in accounting for the dynamics of a fall. A person suspended in a full-body harness could become an uncontrollable pendulum, colliding with unyielding structures or left hanging for extended periods. In such cases, the danger shifted from impact to physiology—cerebral hypoxia, syncope, and even cardiac arrest became real possibilities, compounding trauma with delay.

Eventually the focus moved away from the prevention of falls in industrial roofing, to mitigating the harm caused by a fall. A radical idea that flew in the face of the hierarch of risk control but was nonetheless a pragmatic solution to an ongoing conundrum – how to protect the roofer whilst allowing the construction of the roof. A net would be erected just below the roof to protect the leading edge as it advanced. Falls from the roof would be safely arrested before any harm could occur.

Our company was at the forefront of the use of nets as fall mitigation. Barney Green was the quiet force behind it. He had the civil engineering mind and the installer’s instinct, but more than that, he had the patience to explain. To clients, to contractors, to regulators. He didn’t sell nets; he sold the idea that falling shouldn’t mean dying. That safety could be built in, not bolted on.

We trialled systems on live sites, tweaked anchor points, documented deflections, worked with the HSE. And when the first man fell and walked away, it wasn’t just vindication. It was a shift. From lone survival to shared responsibility.

The standards came later. EN 1263-1, 1263-2. Barney helped shape them. And by then, of course, the culture had started to turn.

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