TRA truss handling adopted as industry best practice

The Trussed Rafter Association (TRA) and the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) have discussed safe handling of trussed rafters with the aim of promoting a greater understanding of safety risks relating to trusses on site and to formally resolve the division of responsibility between truss fabricator and contractors as an industry-wide accepted principle.

Before making demands on the contractor, the TRA Health and Safety Committee has spent time looking at its own industry’s working methods and production machinery. As heavy attic trusses became almost the industry norm, repetitive manual handling of completed trusses has been identified as a possible cause of muscular-skeletal injury.

Work with the HSE has established weight and manpower guidelines for manual handling trusses up to 95kg and introduced an embargo on manual handling above this. This has led to the installation of cranes and automatic truss stackers at many TRA members’ factories.

The TRA is not a regulatory organisation and has no power to compel truss plants to adopt safe machinery, working methods and truss handling equipment. But the HSE has said that the methods used and supported by the TRA will be defined as best practice and it will use them when investigating incidents throughout the industry.

Paul Colley
Chairman
TRA health and safety committee