Guidance for people running scaffolding firms.
Practical writing on TG20, inspections and competence, from the team building ScaffoldOptix.
What a scaffold inspection report should record
A report saying an inspection happened proves attendance. What makes it evidence is recording what was checked — including the parts that were fine.
Digital scaffold inspections, or paper?
Paper captures an inspection perfectly well. What it cannot do is tell you what it has been recording for the last two years.
Highway licences and pavement permits for scaffolding
Any scaffold over a footway or road needs permission from the highway authority — and the lead time is the part that catches firms out.
Hire periods, off-hire and the money left on site
Scaffolding rarely loses money on the quoted price. It loses it on weeks of standing time nobody tracked and a strike date that slipped.
Tracking CISRS card expiry across a squad
Card expiry has the same weakness as every future-dated record: captured once, then dependent on somebody happening to remember.
Ties and anchors: testing, recording and what goes wrong
A tie is only as good as what it is fixed into, and the substrate is the one variable a drawing cannot know in advance.
Who is actually competent to inspect a scaffold?
Competence is specific to the structure in front of you, not a general status — and that is where most inspection arrangements quietly go wrong.
Temporary roofs: what changes when you put a lid on it
A temporary roof is not a scaffold with sheeting on top. It is a different structure with different loads and a different design basis.