An Invitation to Help Make the World a Better Place

There’s no denying it—over-regulation can be a nightmare. Sometimes, it feels like the more rules we have, the harder it is to actually do the job. And when it comes to fall protection and rescue safety, not every situation can be solved by a simple regulation or blanket rule.
As experienced safety and rescue professionals, we know that each worksite, each rescue, and each worker is different. When real-world scenarios and physics fail to read the books that the standards-writers used, we have to use our best judgment to make sure everyone stays safe.
Safety is about more than just wearing the right gear and checking the ropes. It’s about experience, knowing what works, and using that knowledge to keep people safe. But where should we draw the line? How far should standards go?

A Seat at the Table—Before Someone Who Actually Likes Standards Takes It

I’ll be honest, I wasn’t thrilled when my boss, Steve Hudson, first asked me to get involved in standards development. I had a lot of thoughts, none of which were particularly positive about spending hours in meetings discussing regulations. But I’ll never forget what he said:

“This is an opportunity. If you don’t step up, someone else will—and they might actually like standards.”

At the time, I couldn’t help but wonder, who likes standards? But looking back, I realize he had a point. Standards are essential—they provide a baseline for safety and ensure that everyone is on the same page. However, at the other end of the spectrum are those who use the regulatory process to redirect the industry toward their biases or preferences.
Somewhere between the lowest common denominator and the self-righteous dominator is a balance that promotes safety without stifling the flexibility we need in real-world situations.

A World Without Standards

Have you ever considered what our world might be like if stop signs didn’t mean STOP? Or if electrical outlets were all wired to deliver an arbitrary output? Or how big a “cup” of sugar should be?
When I first began participating in NFPA 1983 a few decades ago, there was a specific requirement for how strong a rope should be. However, there were big gaps in defining test methods, sample lengths, terminations, and interpretation of results.
Under this scenario, manufacturers could publish test results in wildly different ways, leading to confusion and inconsistency in safety ratings. This lack of standardization was one of the reasons I reluctantly conceded that standards do have a place in safety equipment.

How Far is Too Far?

The first edition of NFPA 1983 in the late 1980s was five pages long. Today, NFPA 1983 is part of the 245-page NFPA 2500 Standard. Have we improved industry safety with these additional pages, or have we just made equipment more expensive and complex?
Some questionable requirements include:
– “Life Safety Rope shall be constructed of virgin fiber.” European EN standards allow recycled fiber—why doesn’t NFPA?
– “All load-bearing buckles must be proof-loaded to 11kN.” Does this genuinely improve safety, or just increase costs?
– “Soft goods must be retired no more than ten years from manufacture.” Shouldn’t storage conditions and actual use be considered?
While quality is imperative, we must ask: Who is really benefiting from these increasingly complex standards?

“Consensus Means Everyone’s a Little Bit Unhappy”

When he was teaching me the ropes of standards development, Steve used to like to say:

“The true definition of consensus is that everyone is a little bit unhappy!”

At first, I thought that sounded like a terrible motto. But after being part of a few discussions, I saw the wisdom in it. There’s no perfect solution for everyone. It’s about finding the best compromise that ensures safety without over-regulation.
That’s why having experienced technicians at the table is crucial. Field technicians know what’s practical, what’s not, and what’s downright dangerous. Engineering, manufacturing, training, and testing professionals are essential, but so are those who work with the equipment daily.
Without this balance, we risk creating impractical standards that don’t work in real-world applications.

Why You Should Get Involved

If you don’t get involved in standards development, someone else will. And if you’re not there to advocate for practical solutions, we could end up with standards that make your job harder, not necessarily safer.
Yes, attending meetings and discussing regulations might sound dull. But being part of the process ensures that standards make sense for the people who rely on them daily. If we don’t take that opportunity, we’re leaving it to someone else—someone who may have an entirely different agenda.
Remember: “True consensus means everyone is a little bit unhappy.”
And that’s okay. Because in the end, it’s about ensuring that safety doesn’t take a backseat to bureaucracy.

Get Involved: Standards That Matter

If this has piqued your interest, here are some key standards in our industry you might want to consider contributing to:

• NFPA 2500 (Operations & Training for Technical Search and Rescue, Life Safety Rope & Equipment)
  • Next edition: 2027
  • Committee Application
• NFPA 1006 (Technical Rescue Personnel Professional Rescue Qualifications)
  • Committee Application
• ANSI Z359 (Fall Protection Code)
  • Committee Interest Form
• ANSI Z459 (Rope Access)
  • Next edition: 2027
  • Committee Interest Form
• ANSI A10.48
  • Next edition: 2029
  • Committee Interest Form

If you’re in this industry, your experience matters. Join the discussion and help shape the standards that affect our work every day.

⊕ Rope used for rescue, rope access or work at height should be specifically designed and intended for life safety use.

⊕ Tested and marked in accordance with a relevant standard.

⊕ USA most respected life safety rope standards (NFPA 2500 and ANSI Z359 and ANSI Z459) refer back to Cordage Institute Life Safety Rope Test Methods (CI1801).

• Unique method of reporting Minimum Breaking Strength.
  • break testing at least five samples of rope
  • calculating three standard deviations below the mean of those results.

⊕ EXAMPLE: 5 samples from five different lots of rope

• Lab wll pull test the rope to failure.
• Inevitably slightly different results with each test.
• what is the RIGHT number to report?

⊕ Actual numbers Scenario

• (6500) pounds
• (6750) pounds
• (6675) pounds
• (7005) pounds
• (6925) pounds

⊕ What number do we report?

• best result?  7005 pounds force.
• worst-case? 6500 pounds (about 500 pounds less than the best result)
• What aboutnatural variation in materials testing – are these reliable?

⊕ Cordage Institute test method (and the NFPA and ANSI standards that refer back to it)

• mathematical approach to ensure statistical significance
• Other Standdards(Euro-norms or CE) do not use this method

⊕ “3-sigma MBS” method.

⊕ At least five tests from different manufacturing lots, very specific test method

• calculate the MEAN AVERAGE
• SUBRACT three standard deviations from the mean
• 7% confidence

⊕ Practical view, sample set.

• add up the sum of all our test results (33,855)
• THEN we divide by the number of tests (5)
• Average – 6771
• which is six thousand seven hundred seventy one
• Calculate standard deviation from mean average (200lbf)
  • symbol called SIGMA.
• multiply Standard Deviation by THREE…. 3x 200.98 = 602.94
  • refer to this as THREE SIGMA
• SUBTRACT that 3-Sigma number from the MEAN AVERAGE
  • 6771 – 602.94 = 6168
  • 900 pounds less than the best test
  • 332 pounds lower than even the worst test

⊕ THIS WILL affect your safety factor calculations!

• 3s mbs is a number that you can rely on
• 7% confidence

⊕ NOT all standards use this method

• even within Cordage Institute, only the Life Safety Rope standard uses it
• many standards don’t even specify how the reported MBS is supposed to be derived
  • only that the strength of tested samples needs to be greater than X

⊕ How do YOU use MBS figures?

That said, not all departments are leaping into making the transition so rapidly. For starters, it can be very costly to make this transition because, depending on what other equipment is being used, things like rope grabs and descenders must also be replaced at the same time. It is very important to ensure that all critical life safety components that are diameter dependent be matched to the rope diameter being used. If you are using bollard type descenders like the CT Sparrow, Skylotec Sirius, or Petzl ID, these are very diameter dependent and would need to be replaced when you go to 11mm. This is also true for rope grab devices such as the Grip and Rescucender. On the other hand, if you are using adjustable friction devices such as the brake rack, prusiks, etc, the same size device can be used on both diameters of rope. When it comes to prusiks, the 8mm diameter prusiks used by most rescuers on 12.5mm (1/2” rope) will also work on 11mm, but it does behave differently so – as with all cord-on-rope configurations – you should do your own testing/experiments specific to your application to make sure that the two are working together in the manner that you prefer.

As far as performance properties… to get a bit of perspective here we can take a step back and consider how we ever got caught up in the half-inch rope philosophy in the first place. It’s a simple story, really… in the early 1980’s the IAFF wrote a whitepaper that said a rope should be able to withstand a 2-person load of 600lbf with at least a 15:1 safety factor. In those days, we used laid ropes and it took a 5/8” or ¾” rope to get to 9,000lbf, and before you know it standards writers and rescue trainers were singing this tune.

Despite that first standard being only a few pages long, there were a lot of things in it that have perpetuated misinformation ever since. Things like having to discard rope after use, 15:1 safety factors, ½” rope, and more. Some of this was a result of limitations in materials and products in those days, but much was because the standards writers took the approach of being design restrictive rather than writing a performance based standards. In subsequent years since, standards writers have worked hard to try to un-do some of these misperceptions, and with each passing edition the standard seems to become less design-based and increasingly performance-oriented.

By the time the first NFPA 1983 standard was rewritten in the early 1990’s kernmantle was on the scene, and it only took a 1/2” rope to get to 9,000lbf MBS, so suddenly ½” became the magic diameter. In subsequent editions of the standard, as the fire industry began to better understand the quality and performance of true life safety rope, smaller diameters and lower strengths would be permitted… including 11mm rope for ropes used for lighter weights, and diameters as small as 7.5mm for personal escape.

In fact, 11mm (and lower) diameter ropes have been permitted in context of NFPA for over a decade, and have been used in mountain rescue, cave rescue, rope access, and industry for even longer. Some of these environments are extremely harsh

The durability, abrasion resistance, flexibility, and stretch of an 11mm rope are all engineered features, just as they are in a 12.5mm.  I can show you 11mm ropes that are more durable than a 12.5mm rope, and vice-versa, just depends on materials and construction.

The ANSI Z459.1 standard not only helps to define and place guidance around rope access as a viable work method in fall protection, it has also helped to de-mystify skills requirements for rope technicians working at height and give employers a little more flexibility in the extent of training their employees receive.

This standard clarifies that COMPLEX skills are NOT required for working at the most foundational level of rope access, allowing employers who manage SIMPLE up-and-down rope access sites to train employees JUST in the skills they need – working with a two-rope system, negotiating an edge, descending, and just enough ascending to keep themselves out of trouble.

With the definition of SIMPLE rope access, employees can reduce the number of days and complexity of skills their employees use to just what is really needed. It is not necessary for employees working only in SIMPLE rope access to need to learn difficult rope tricks like passing a deviation, aid climbing, and other things that they will probably never actually use in the field!

This concept works under the ANSI Z459 model by classifying worksites as either SIMPLE or COMPLEX.

A SIMPLE worksite is defined as one that offers clear access and egress, is unaffected by adjacent trades, where technicians do not need to pass knots or deviations, and where rescue can be carried out directly to ground or platform level.

This differs from a COMPLEX worksite primarily in that a COMPLEX site is one where environmental factors, adjacent work, deviated ropes, or difficult access and egress necessitate a greater skillset.

Note that the concepts of SIMPLE and COMPLEX do not directly correlate to the terms AUTHORIZED and COMPETENT. These two sets of terms refer to completely different concepts.

As previously described, the concepts of SIMPLE and COMPLEX are used to describe the complexity of the worksite, whereas the terms AUTHORIZED and COMPETEN refer to the level of responsibility given to an employee.

You can learn more about these terms in PMI’s previous post on that subject – but to summarize…

An AUTHORIZED Technician is one who has been authorized, or given permission, by the employer to perform a given task. A Technician may be AUTHORIZED to work on a SIMPLE worksite, or a Technician may be Authorized to work on a COMPLEX site… it is up to the employer to award that designation based on verification that the technician is sufficiently trained to operate on that type of worksite.

It is with the designations AUTHORIZED and COMPETENT that the scope of the Technician’s duties will vary.

Specifically, an Authorized Person simply has permission to perform a certain type of work on a certain site. They generally do not have supervisory authority and are not expected to take corrective action.  In contrast, a COMPETENT ROPE ACCESS TECHNICIAN is one who is capable of recognizing hazards and who has the employers authority to take prompt corrective action. Often the Competent Technician for a given site is given supervisory responsibility. Clearly this requires a little more extensive training and skill.

These two sets of terms, SIMPLE/COMPLEX and AUTHORIZED/COMPETENT, refer to different concepts, but they can and should be used together by the employer to but again you might have a Technician who is deemed COMPETENT to work on a SIMPLE worksite, or a Technician who is deemed COMPETENT to work on a COMPLEX worksite. The key here is that they must be trained and experienced enough to monitor, evaluate, and address existing and potential fall hazards one WHICHEVER type of worksite they are working on.

I hope this helps to clarify a bit more about SIMPLE and COMPLEX worksites, and about how AUTHORIZED and COMPETENT Technicians are expected to work in these environments. You can get your very own copy of the ANSI Z459 standard from the American Society of Safety Professionals (ASSP), at the link below. If you are responsible for managing a rope access program, you may want to consider PMI’s online Program Manager course for more thorough detail.