How to maintain your safety harness

Sometimes, working at height is unavoidable. And, if you’re working from a substantial height, the 3 points of contact rule is no longer enough to ensure the safety of you and your team.

If you’ve read about the different safety techniques when it comes to working at height, you’ll know that a safety harness is of paramount importance to ensuring you and your team are as protected as possible.

As falls while working at height count for 25% of fatal injuries at work each year, properly maintaining this equipment should be one of your top day to day priorities on site. 

The key to properly maintaining your harness is understanding how to store, clean, inspect this vital piece of safety equipment.

Maintaining your harness

While maintaining your safety harness may seem simple, ultimately there are a set of rules and regulations you should follow in order to guarantee the safety of your team. This is mainly through storing and cleaning:

Storing

When storing your harness, remember to H. O. C:

• Hang your lanyard. To guarantee your harness is protected, you should ensure your lanyard is properly hung. This is to ensure it isn’t crushed, bent, damp, or torn by any other objects, causing the PPE to be compromised.
• Out of reach. Although you want to guarantee the safety of you and your team, make sure no one picks a harness up and uses it incorrectly while you are not there to supervise. Unintended use could, at the very least, alter the fit of your harness readjusting to fit their body which, if you are unaware, could lead to your safety being put at risk during your next shift. At the worst, they could severely damage themselves or the harness, putting lives at risk.
• Cool, dry location. When storing your harness, it’s important to store it somewhere out of direct sunlight or exposed to any form of heat source. Heat and UV rays can damage the integrity of your harness and could cause them to fail when you need them most.

Cleaning

Your equipment should be cleaned on a regular basis. Not only will this help you guarantee there are no substances on the equipment that could degrade them, it will ensure that you can properly see each part of the equipment so you can do a thorough inspection.

4 steps to cleaning:

1. Damp the harness with a sponge with warm water, wiping away any residue on your straps or buckles.
2. Use soap and water to work up a lather on the straps.
3. Rinse the straps using a sponge and clean water.
4. Wipe the equipment and hang it to dry, away from any direct heat sources.

Remember: Do not use any bleach, chlorine, or abrasives on your safety harness. This can damage the integrity of your PPE, putting you and your team at risk. 

Properly maintaining your harness, however, should also include an inspection plan.

Inspecting your harness

Like all PPE, in order to guarantee your harness is fit for purpose, all equipment must be checked before and after use to identify any areas of potential concern.

There are key signs of damage you should look out for, such as:

• Burned areas.
• Holes.
• Glazing.
• Cuts and tears.
• General signs or aging.

Regardless of the age of your harness, if it is damaged in any way from either improper storage or after an accident that has damaged the integrity of your safety equipment, it should be discarded.

How long should harnesses last?

Realistically, how long your safety harness lasts depends on:

• How much you use them on a day-to-day basis. While 5-6 years is the recommended lifespan, ultimately 5-6 years of use could mean different things for different organisations. If you do not regularly work at height, you may find that your harnesses and safety equipment lasts much longer than 5-6 years, if stored and maintained correctly.
• How safely and securely they are stored. If you properly use, store, and maintain your safety harness, there’s no reason that, in some instances, it could last longer than 5-6 years.
• How the equipment is used by your team. Ultimately, the lifespan of your safety harnesses relies on PPE to be used correctly by you and your workers. If used improperly or if the safety harness has been used in an emergency situation, there may be exterior damage, as mentioned above, that can compromise the longevity of your equipment.

Regardless of how often you use your PPE, the key to expanding its lifespan is by properly caring for them and regularly checking them. While you can do this onsite, we have found that our accredited 6-month checks can both help elongate the lifespan of less used harnesses that have passed the 5-6 year mark, as well as give an impartial view on the safety of your equipment. 

Brace yourself....

In short, the best way to make sure your harness is fit for purpose is by storing it properly, having regular maintenance checks, and ensuring that you’re cleaning your equipment as necessary.

Ultimately, there is no definitive lifespan for safety equipment. While the 5-6 year lifespan is relevant for most harnesses, if you properly maintain your equipment and ensure it’s stored correctly, you may be able to use it longer than 5-6 years.

To do this, however, it is vital that you frequently carry out in-depth maintenance checks of your equipment to ensure that it’s fit for purpose and keeping you and your team safe at all times.