Let’s dive deeper into this theme.
IRATA has published its annual Work and Safety Analysis, detailing activities for the year 2024. This analysis is highly anticipated, and numerous professionals are expected to provide their perspectives in the forthcoming months. This analysis is a great benefit of IRATA membership, providing a deeper understanding of safety performance across the industry, identifying recurring risks, and ultimately providing the necessary changes to operational and training programs designed to reduce risk to workers.
You can download the Work and Safety Analysis 2025 here.
We are a training member company with over a decade of membership with IRATA. I think our procedures and training curriculum are among the best in the world. Nevertheless, we can learn much from this report and should incorporate these lessons into our daily teachings. IRATA changed its reporting requirements which affected the number of reports received from members. This change resulted in fewer reported dangerous occurrences from training member companies. Overall, IRATA received 279 reports, up from 267 in 2023.
The table below shows the result of the incidents reported compared with previous years.
Incident Type | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 |
Dangerous Occurrence | 170 | 160 | 174 | 182 |
Less than 7-day | 89 | 88 | 74 | 59 |
Over 7-day | 16 | 14 | 6 | 8 |
Major Injuries | 2 | 4 | 3 | 4 |
Fatalities | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
Total reported incidents | 279 | 267 | 257 | 256 |
Let’s take a quick look at the number of workers who were exposed to injury or illness in 2024:
Grade | Employment | Hours worked | Hours / Employment |
Level 1 | 11,682 | 11,644,784 | 997 |
Level 2 | 5,156 | 6,169,266 | 1,197 |
Level 3 | 10,458 | 9,496,743 | 908 |
Managers | 1,406 | 1,657,069 | 1,179 |
Others | 4,068 | 4,697,732 | 1,155 |
Total | 32,715 | 33,665,594 | 1,029 |
This chart illustrates the average number of hours worked per technician at each level. It’s interesting to me that Level 2 IRATA technicians worked more hours than Levels 1 or 3. Since one could expect Levels 1 and 2 technicians to only work under the supervision of a Level 3, I find it curious that Level 3’s work fewer hours on average than either of the two other grades.
Contributing factors
The leading immediate causes of incidents are:
Underlying causes
Human factors (198) [242] continue to dominate the underlying causes of rope access incidents. 37% (74) of these reports cite a “lapse of concentration” as the underlying cause for the incident. Notably, “lack of experience” and “failure to follow rules” (50 each) are identified as contributing causes. IRATA has recently introduced the Rope Access Site Supervisor (RASS) certification in an effort to help improve the overall performance of Level 3 site supervisors.
IRATA introduced new categories within Human Factors (confusion (11), and pre-existing medical condition (11)) which may help classify incidents a bit more clearly. It is important to note that both of the fatalities reported Medical/health related factors may have played a part in the incident.
Management factors (146) [130] continue to be problematic. Some of the reported incidents identified multiple management factors. The top themes from this category are:
Other categories of underlying causes and their top themes are:
Work Environment (94) [99]
Plant and/or work equipment (67) [62]
Personal protective equipment (59) [57]
All of this information can be a bit confusing and lead to incorrect assumptions. The contributing factors and underlying causes demonstrate our need to improve our supervision at the worksite. We need to improve our resolve to identify hazards at the worksite and to establish safe systems of work which will mitigate or eliminate these hazards. We should use our tools correctly and with the safety guards in place. Most importantly, we should follow our rules and hold each other accountable to do the same.
I believe in a worksite without danger. I believe we can all go to work and return home each day without incident. I also believe it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure this happens every time, every day, with everybody. Do your part to ensure you and your co-workers have a chance to enjoy the time away from work. Make it a point to think about your loved ones at home while you are preparing your hazard analysis and risk assessments. Keep yourself safe so you can keep them safe.
I’ll write more over the next few weeks regarding the 2025 WASA report. In the meantime, be safe.
Dwayne