Or how long the rescue would take? It’s an unlikely event. But if it did happen, recovery time is critical. That’s why we developed our own unique inflatable system. Recovery takes just 3-minutes – making it the fastest net recovery system on the market.
Seeing the inflatable airbag in action makes you realise what a brilliant life-saving invention it is – and why every construction site should have one. In fact, it was this that prompted Northern Steel Decking to hire it for their sites.
Jack Fulton, Managing Director at Northern Steel Decking, commented: “We’re putting the safety of our team above all other concerns. We realise that the likelihood of someone falling injured into a net is very slim – but if it were to happen then we want to be prepared for all eventualities. What impressed us, was the speed and simplicity of the system. That’s why we’ve made the decision to invest in hiring these inflating airbags – it was the next logical step”.
The airbag, which has an inbuilt stretcher, is fully inflated underneath the casualty in the net using battery powered blowers, in just over one minute. Powered cutters are then used to free the safety netting. Deflation takes around 2-minutes by opening zips which accelerates air loss from the system which is held stable by operatives holding the handles around it.
The idea for the innovation came about after our sister company, Beresford’s Flooring experienced a major incident in 2017. During a routine site installation one of our employees had a cardiac arrest working at height and despite the best efforts of our colleagues performing CPR, died in hospital. We were able to get to him because he collapsed onto scaffolding. Had he fallen into a net, this would have been almost impossible, as the current rescue systems are impractical or too slow.
The system is available for hire and comes in two sizes. Recovery is from a floor-to-floor height of around 3.0m and 4.5m. Free training is available at our centre in Ashbourne.
“The safety net recovery system was a solution to a problem where floor heights and obstructions meant that we couldn’t get a MEWP to the underside of the safety net for rescue. The net was installed by rope access technicians, but we needed an alternative method of rescue from below. At the time, there wasn’t a system that would work to the height we were looking for, so we approached the team at Brilliant Ideas. They custom-built a larger airbag system for us, giving us recovery from a floor-to-floor height of around 4.5m. We used it on a challenging project with very strict safety measures in place. Our operatives in charge attended a training day at Brilliant Ideas training centre, so that they were fully prepared should they need to use it – which they didn’t. The simplicity of this net recovery system solved and overcame a problem on this project. We would definitely look to implement this solution again”.
Richard Cresswell, Operations Supervisor.
Filming took place at One City Park in Bradford. Many thanks to Northern Steel Decking, Caddick Construction and Elland Steel who stepped in to help.
