Contractors warned to check the grade of scaffold boards

contractjournal.com newsletter: 23/03/2006

Contractors warned to check the grade of scaffold boards

Later this year the British Standards Institute will publish a draft revision of its standard for scaffold boards. It follows a research project undertaken by four of the UK's leading scaffold board manufacturers, backed by the Health & Safety Executive, into the performance of boards currently on the market. Scaffold board supplier John Brash explains.

Scaffold board standards

There has been a British Standard for scaffold boards since 1981. However, only about 30% of the common 38mm boards bought today are made in accordance with that standard, BS2482. The rest are either NASC specification boards – 1.5m span boards visually graded in accordance with National Association of Scaffolding Contractors grading rules – or so-called “Grade A” 1.2m span boards.

Grade A boards tend to be made to individual manufacturers' specifications, so the quality can vary considerably. As there are no universally accepted Grade A grading rules, contractors may not know exactly what they are buying when they purchase these boards.

For many contractors, the decision on which boards to buy is further complicated by confusion over whether boards should be machine or visually graded. Christian Brash, managing director of scaffold board supplier John Brash, says: “The variety of grading methods for boards is so wide that choosing a board has become unnecessarily complicated. There is no standard to say whether machine strength graded boards or visually graded boards should be used. As a company, we use both methods, but are firm supporters of machine grading.”

Revising the British Standard

John Brash was one of the four scaffold board manufacturers that took part in the research, and Christian Brash now chairs the subcommittee that is revising the British Standard. “One of the main findings of the research was that flatwise modulus of elasticity, the parameter measured by strength grading machines, is far more accurate and consistent in predicting bending strength than any of the visual defect measures,” he explains. “A scaffold board is an engineered product and should be purchased as such,” he explains. “The safety implications of a board failing could be disastrous. Any contractor using Grade A boards must ensure they are from a manufacturer who can demonstrate a clearly defined method of production within a quality assurance system and who employs qualified scaffold board graders.”

Brash hopes the forthcoming revision to BS 2482, which will be published for comment later this year, will clarify the situation and encourage more contractors to buy boards that comply with the Standard.

John Brash launches Alpha+

Brash's firm has used the knowledge it gained during the research project to launch its own version of Grade A boards, Alpha+. This is a premium 38mm x 225mm, 1.2m support span scaffold board with clearly defined grading and performance. The 3.9m long Alpha+ scaffold boards are machine strength graded to pre-determined settings derived from the research, and are manufactured within the company’s ISO 9001:2000 quality system.

Naz Mayadeen, commercial director of PHD Modular Access Services Ltd, comments: “All of our scaffold boards are supplied by John Brash. Most main contractors specify Grade A boards, but we go one step further by using John Brash’s Alpha+ scaffold boards because we are confident of their performance.”

Brash explains: “We have tried to simplify the situation for contractors and now only manufacture three grades of board.” These are 1.5m span VG and MG standard Kitemarked boards, which are fully compliant with BS 2482:1981; NASC-compliant visually graded 1.5m span boards and the new Alpha+ 1.2m span boards.

Choosing the right boards

To avoid confusion, Brash suggests contractors use the following checklist whenever they purchase boards - whatever the grade:

• Are the scaffold boards graded to a clearly defined set of rules?
• Are the boards graded by fully trained and independently assessed graders?
• Are the boards manufactured within an ISO 9001:2000 quality assurance scheme?
• Do the boards meet a known performance standard?
• And if any of these questions cannot be answered satisfactorily, he says you should ask yourself “Am I confident in using boards manufactured by this company?”