Ever since the very first lineman put on a set of hooks, line crews have climbed wood poles through a technique called “free climbing.” Once positioned at the elevated work site, the lineman attaches a positioning strap to his body belt, leans back and, with free hands, goes to work.

In some instances, linemen choose to use the position strap during climbing. Unfortunately, even if linemen decide to wear a positioning strap while ascending and descending the pole, they still put themselves at risk for injury. If a cutout occurs, the climber risks sliding down the pole, suffering cuts and scrapes from the fall and, in some cases, bruises or broken bones from the landing. Even more unfortunate are the growing statistics of men and women who have ended their careers and even their lives at the bottom of a pole from a fall.

Fall protection became a top priority at Public Service Electric and Gas (PSE&G; Newark, New Jersey) after a fatality in 2005. During a local outage call in November 2005, a trouble-shooter's boom got caught on a limb while he was ascending. As a result, he was ejected from a fully extended aerial bucket and hit the ground head first. The regional medical examiner pronounced him dead two hours later. This freak accident was complicated by the fact that he was not wearing fall-protection gear.

Investigating Fall Protection

Following the fatality, PSE&G's management immediately established a representative team to examine not just the isolated incident, but also the company's entire fall-protection guidelines. The focus of the safety task force was on all height-related work in all three areas of operations — transmission, distribution and substations. To more clearly understand the issues, the utility appointed two subteams — one for outside plant operations and one for inside plant work. The teams were commissioned to investigate employee work practices and equipment. They also were responsible for surveying how others in the industry were approaching fall protection.

John Latka, PSE&G's vice president of electric operations, says climbing a utility pole every day is inherently risky, and for that reason, it was critical for PSE&G to do anything it could to minimize the risk of injury.

“Our goal is to have every employee go home in the same condition they came to work in,” says Latka. “The advanced equipment we want to deploy will help our linemen do that.”

Make Equipment User Friendly

When PSE&G's outside plant began conducting its research, the employees talked with linemen. They discovered that the required belts and harness equipment used by the linemen were cumbersome to work with. Unlike transmission tower workers, PSE&G distribution linemen were free climbing wood poles, attaching a positioning strap to their body belt when they began work. Because the existing equipment was not user friendly, it was viewed as a hindrance rather than helpful for day-to-day climbing. This recurring issue was taken to PSE&G's primary supplier of climbing and fall-related personal protective equipment, Buckingham Manufacturing Co. Inc. (Binghamton, New York).

Early in the investigation, PSE&G visited the manufacturer's facilities to watch a demonstration of a new innovation that provided full climbing protection. While PSE&G was in full compliance with all ANSI/OSHA fall-protection standards, this procedure and device — developed by a group of experienced climbers after a fatal climbing accident in 1998 — expanded the safety factor to include the climb itself.

The signature feature of the device is the added protection of wearing the device during the climb and descent. If the climber starts to fall, the strap squeezes the pole, securing the user and preventing a fall. This belt literally grips around the circumference of the pole should a lineman begin to fall.

Over a period of a few months, while the industry-wide survey was being conducted and the existing equipment was being evaluated, the manufacturer was asked to demonstrate the advanced fall-protection device to outside plant personnel at PSE&G. One of the co-inventors of the system, who also worked as a lineman, demonstrated the equipment to the outside sales team. The team was impressed with the fact that the idea for the product came from the field. This was also reassuring to the safety team as they tried to implement equipment that would significantly change the way the linemen climb.

In early 2006, with full support from senior management and IBEW local 94 union leadership, PSE&G adopted the new fall device and procedure. The utility also established a timeline to deploy the device and train all 500 linemen in the field. The implementation has taken close to two years.

Let's Talk About It

Because the change to the fall-protection equipment would affect experienced linemen and their way of climbing, PSE&G's safety team knew they needed to get buy in from all parties.

Anticipating the unrest and sometimes outright resistance to climbing a different way, PSE&G took a “let's talk about it” approach to deploying the more than 500 new fall-protection devices.

Rather than trying to push something down from the top, the PSE&G management, the union and the task force have had great success and quicker adoption of the new climbing devices by encouraging linemen to express what they are unhappy about. This simple procedure of getting to the root of the problem often resulted in either design modifications or the adoption of a new way of climbing. Case in point was the crossover strap, which is used to maneuver around obstacles.

A Work in Progress

Using the new 100% fall-protection procedure, the climber hitchhikes up and down the pole using a crossover strap. After the new system had been used in the field by hundreds of climbers, their feedback was that properly attaching the belt, called the Bucksqueeze, was difficult. At the time, there was only one provider of the advanced 100% fall-protection device. Since then, other manufacturers now offer a climbing device with a similar “choker” or “cinching” feature. The recurring request to make the system more user friendly was presented to PSE&G's fall-protection equipment provider. As a direct result of the linemen's feedback, the manufacturer improved the crossover strap to make it more user friendly and easier to attach and detach.

Another concern that came from the field was the size of the lanyards. When climbing over obstructions, prior to detaching the fall-arrest device, a lanyard is integrated into the system to sustain connection to the structure. The standard lanyard provided was 8 ft long. This length fit most linemen, but was a stretch for bigger workers and was too large for smaller linemen. In ongoing discussions with the manufacturer, it was decided to expand the sizes of lanyards available. Three sizes are now available and are compatible with the standard harness: 7 ft, 8 ft and 9 ft.

PSE&G's fall-protection systems for outside plant applications have also evolved to include using Kevlar harnesses. Where most utilities use a harness made of synthetic plastic or nylon, PSE&G has adopted a fire-retardant Kevlar material for its harnesses and climbing belts. Although these units are more expensive, should an arc flash occur, the Kevlar will not burn up like synthetic materials will. Synthetic materials would put linemen at risk for a fall. These improvements in the belt and the lanyards are typical examples of the way the deployment of the new devices and procedures have evolved. It is a work in progress.