ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Violation Photo Forum Is this scaffolding?

Have a look at this.
Can you imagine working off this?.


Your views please.

A better question:

Would you walk under it to get to the door?

Well, it started off as Scaffolding.

Roger

It does look a little precarious. Any idea where this is? It looks as though it might be India, or maybe the Middle East.

No I'm picking its Indonesia, Sumatra or Java.

Spooky! I don't think I'd want to be up there or walk under it either,

Paul
Judging from the lettering on the sign in the far right, I'd have to say middle east.

Betcha these guys also work as circus performers...

The only things missing here are a ring and some bleachers for the audience...

Mike (mamills)

[This message has been edited by mamills (edited 10-18-2005).]

Im realllly curious how they got those 55gallon drums up there in the first place... I'm going with this being in the middle east also, (seeing the farsi script pointed out by IanR) Gives me the chills just looking at this....

I see another sign that reads "pompeinjection". Some part of the Arab world with French influence. Algeria? Morocco? Lebanon?

I know someone who spent some time in Egypt as an industrial manufacturing consultant. His job was to get various metal stamping machines fixed and up and running. He insisted that the various safety switches that had been disconnected be rewired back to protect the users from fingers getting metal stamped and such. A whole factory full of this sort of thing.

Another time a worker got seriously injured, and needed to go to the hospital. Only vehicle avaliable was the owner's, as the only other vehicle was out devlivering product. The owner ddn't want to give my friend the keys to his car a first, but my friend managed to convince the owner to let him have the car so he could get the injured person to the hospital. After that all the workers considered my friend as a hero. Seems that management there considers regular workers as disposable throw away "items".

Productivity did go up once people didn't have to worry about losing fingers and such as much as before.

OSHA can be a real pain, but really bad conditions can develop without it. The scaffolding pictured above shows about the same level of care the Egyptian factory owner showed for his workers before my friend got there.

I shiver at the lack of diagonal braces between the uprights. I know there are gusset braces at the bottoms of the uprights, but it still looks shaky, even without the assorted barrels, planks, blocks,...

Muslim decoration; French influence; North Africa? Ah! France! - they were taught by the Masters!
There's a guy working on his roof right now only a couple of kilometers away from me, using home-made wooden scaffolding (2X4s) roped thro' his bedroom windows, ( I visualise it all tied to his wardrobes! ). It's 3 storeys up. Last week we saw another guy painting fibre-cement roof-slates with black paint on a 40 degree roof. He hadn't even got a roof ladder. Signwritten 'painters' van in the road. How he got up there is anyones' guess- the ladder must have been round the back, and he'd come over the ridge! He was halfway down the roof, working in tennis shoes. Mrs B. commented on his nice white boiler suit! ( Women notice these things!).
It's common here to see workmen perched on planks, 20 or 30 foot up, often not even remotely horizontal, hung off of things called 'cripples', which are hooked into the guttering and perch on the top rungs of a couple of ladders. That name is ominous isn't it?
Anyway, Muslims believe implicitly in kismet; if they take a tumble, or get a bag of cement on the bonce, it's the will of Allah, and is accepted with good grace. Oh, to be so carefree and full of undoubting faith.


Alan

I've heard the same about India. Jeremy Clarkson (Brits will recognize the name) did a show over there and mentioned the way they drive in the dark with no lights, pull out to pass on blind corners, etc. and adopt the same attitude that "Whatever happens is the will of God. If we are destined to get there safely, we will do so anyway."

Well maybe. But I reckon God also expects people the use the common sense with which he endowed them by not pulling into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler with no lights.

Will of god huh? Yeah, I think he expects you to do your part as well. Possibly, Charles Darwin might have been one of his unrecognized profits. Anyone familiar with the Darwin Awards?

Paul, I remember that show! He went to a ( Hindustani motors? ) factory where they were still making Austin Ambassadors (?) from the 1950s. They had the press-tools from when the UK line closed- so worn out and knackered that none of the panels fitted. They had several 'fitter-wallahs' who bashed 7 varieties of crap out of the bodywork with sledgehammers till it went close enough to weld, then filled the huge dents with compo and sanded it all smoothe again!

Alan

Folks,

Let's please focus on recognizing the hazard here, rather than the 'who' and 'why' speculations. We don't want to get into discussions about Race, Religion or Cultures.

I'm sorry, but my take on all this is what does it have to do with anything electrical? It appears that they are doing some kind of stucco or mortar work. Granted, there is a hazard here..of falling down in a jumbled mess.

Perhaps this thread should be closed or deleted? IMHO

edited for spelling....

[This message has been edited by mxslick (edited 10-21-2005).]

Well, MX, I think this pic can be an appropriate springboard for discussion.

First of all....I expect all of us have done some occasional "field engineering" so we could "get'rdun" (as Larry the cable guy says).

A pic like this is something of a wake-up call- just how many chances do you want to take? When do you say "enough" and walk away?

I once had a boss who though it perfectly reasonable to "increase the rating" of an overloaded, tipping crane by standing on the bumper! That this gent had an extreme amount of education- but could still think like this- is truly scary.

This scaffold didn't get built all at once. These guys had to add to it a little each day. I suppose that tomorrow they'll place a chair atop- and stand on that!

Sometimes the guys doing really stupid things just need someone to tell them that they're being stupid.....other times, they insist on being so. Still, you have to try!

If they fall I feel confident in saying they asked for it.

mxslick,
It has nothing to do with Electrical work.
However, I posted the pic to give a look at how things are done in countries outside of the US.
This is not usual practice in these countries.
I'll be the judge of that, considering the discussion it has caused, I can't really see why I should get rid of it.
If it was offensive that would be another matter, but it isn't.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 10-23-2005).]

I apologise if my remarks on Hindustani Motors 'Ambassadors' were seen as stepping over a line; no offense intended, cultural, racial or religeous.

Alan


[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 10-23-2005).]

I think this really illustrates a point.

We should be thankful to be in a place where we have safety regulations to protect us.

If these fellows were to refuse to work on this "scaffold", they would probably just be replaced by someone that would, and they'd be out a job.

No worker anywhere on Earth ought to have to work on something like this as a condition of their employment.

Thanx for posting it. I copied it and will show it for comic relief during an OSHA-10 and NFPA 70E class. This one is destined to be a classic.

Reminds me of when I was in Korea in 1970. I was passing a construction site where a 15 story building was being built. For "scaffolding", a bamboo grid was built along one side of the building, tied together with ropes and tied to the building. A bus pulled up and about 50 Koreans got out. I was wondering how they got to the working story. They started climbing up hand over hand until they got to the top. Not too many beer breaks in that place....

I remember reading an article a number of years ago on the use of bamboo as scaffolding.. Apparently it is very common in asia, and that if done properly, it is/was considered as safe or safer than conventional scaffolding, and offers a number of operational advantages over conventional scaffolding.

Bamboo is lightweight, relatively stiff, yet flexible, inexpensive, and readily available. Apparently they are able to attain greater heights using bamboo than with conventional scaffolding, and the bamboo tends to survive storms better than conventional scaffolding.

Bamboo is hollow inside, something like a wooden pipe. Just imagine the use of bamboo conduit!

'ise,
No it isn't, it has small solid sections that fill the inside diameter at each "joint" along its length.
This gives the branches greater strength.

Any other former boy scouts remember building towers and other structures by lashing poles together?

Imagine building scaffolding with nothing more than a truckload of bamboo poles, and some spools of twine or jute. The only tools needed are saws and knives, or maybe just a machate.



[This message has been edited by techie (edited 12-16-2005).]

Any other former boy scouts remember building towers and other structures by lashing poles together?

Sure! We used them to test the fall rate of Cub Scouts for our Gravity Merit Badge. Their parents tended to complain about their children being "Bamboozled"

Yep, took us quite awhile before they let us use, "Trustworthy" after that!
Joe

We added a few points to the Scout Law..


A Scout is Trustworthy, Loyal. Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, Reverent, Hungry, and Not A Fool. ;-)

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 12-16-2005).]

MXSLICK, I think Height-work is relevant to all Electricians. Unsafe practises are common in many countries and frank and open discussion of these practises may someday eliminate them.

Regardless of race, religion or culture, all of us want to see the workers in the pictures get home to their families in one piece.

If it weren't for digital photogaphy, the dodgy scaffolding would have slipped by unnoticed.