Compliance & standards
What is SG4?
SG4 is NASC guidance on preventing falls in scaffolding operations. It sets out how scaffolders are protected while erecting, altering and dismantling a scaffold — the period when the structure is incomplete. The current edition is SG4:22.
A finished scaffold has guard rails. A scaffold being built does not, which is why the guidance exists: the people most at risk from a scaffold are the ones putting it up.
SG4:22 covers tube and fitting and, unlike earlier editions, system scaffolding as well. Its central idea is unchanged from previous editions: the Scaffolders' Safe Zone, a defined area within which a scaffolder works while the structure around them is incomplete.
NASC publishes it as a free download, which removes the usual excuse for a squad not having seen the guidance their method statement is written against.
It is the document a method statement for scaffolding operations is normally written against, which is why the two are usually discussed together.
What goes wrong on site
- A method statement that describes the finished scaffold rather than the process of building it.
- Fall protection arrangements assumed rather than specified for the erection sequence.
- Citing a superseded edition.