Common Mistakes in Harness and Lanyard Use

One of the most common mistakes in harness and lanyard use is actually using them in the first place.

Safety harnesses and lanyards are components of personal fall protection systems, which come in two types: fall restraint and fall arrest.

Fall-restraint systems (also known as work-restraint systems) stop you from reaching the edge of a work area, preventing you from falling.

Fall-arrest systems catch you if you do fall and spread the impact across your body to prevent serious injury.

The mistake is using one of these systems ahead of other safety measures: personal fall protection cannot be your first choice for making work at height safe.

Control measures are ranked in the Work at Height Regulations 2005 (WAH Regulations). So you must consider all possible control measures on one level before moving on to the next. These rankings are:

1. Avoid work at height entirely by doing as much work as possible on the ground.
2. Prevent falls by working from safe areas or implementing fall protection.
3. Minimise the distance or consequences of any fall.

When considering how to prevent falls or minimise their consequences, you must prioritise collective fall protection. Collective fall protection is safer as it safeguards more than one worker simultaneously without their input.

Guardrails, mobile elevated work platforms and scaffolding are all examples of collective fall protection. Provided they’ve been installed correctly, they can be used to stay safe while working at height without much thought.

Personal fall protection systems need to be checked, put on, and set up by the user, which means there’s more potential for errors to be made. If you’re using a personal fall protection system, you must know how to use it safely and avoid the common mistakes in harness and lanyard use.

A routine mistake is assuming equipment is safe. Working for years without incident can cause complacency to set in. For inexperienced workers, blind trust in authority figures can cause them to use equipment without hesitation.

Whatever your experience levels, you must handle your harness and lanyard like life-saving equipment every time you use them. Consider every workday as the day you’ll finally fall, and treat your fall protection system as the only thing that can prevent it.

Check your harness and lanyard thoroughly before every use and ensure they’re appropriate for your body and the work you’re undertaking.

And if something feels off, it probably is. Trust your instincts and question everything. If you have any doubts, speak to a supervisor or refer to the equipment manufacturer’s guidelines.

You must check your harness and lanyard before using them every time. If you rush (or skip) the pre-use check, you could miss critical faults.

Equipment varies, but there are standard components you must check before every use:

• Harness impact/shock indicators – check these are in place and intact
• Lanyard shock absorption mechanisms – check for damage or signs of deployment
• Equipment tags – check these are legible and information is in order, including an appropriate CE/UK CA marking

If any of these three components are compromised, you cannot use the equipment.

You must also check the equipment’s webbing and stitching. Even cuts as small as 1mm can cause catastrophic failure, so don’t rush this stage. Adopt a similar approach to hardware checks and scan for cracks or discolouration, which indicate exposure to extreme heat.

This is only an overview of the pre-use check procedure, not a how-to. You’ll need appropriate training to conduct them in the field and be sure your equipment is safe and compliant.

Safety harnesses and lanyards must undergo regular inspections. These inspections are separate from your pre-use checks and must be conducted by another competent person.

The competent person inspecting the equipment must record their findings and confirm it’s safe to use. Do not use a harness and lanyard if:

• You can’t confirm they were inspected in the last three to six months.
• It’s been more than six months since the last inspection.

You must also be able to identify which harness you’re using. Every harness must have a readable serial number, which helps with tracking inspection status. If the label featuring the serial number is missing or damaged, consider the harness unusable.

After you’ve checked your harness and verified it’s been recently inspected, it’s time to put it on and adjust it so it fits correctly.

Common safety harness mistakes when adjusting the fit include:

• Allowing straps to twist
• Positioning tidies and adjustments inwards towards your body
• Adjusting straps too tightly/loosely

You want your harness to be tight but not restrictive. After putting it on and adjusting all straps, perform a “hand test.” You should be able to barely fit your flat hand under each strap. If your hand can’t fit under a strap, it’s too tight. If you’ve got extra room, it’s too loose.

Some of the most critical parts of a harness are on the back, so you need to ask a “buddy” to check the parts you can’t see after you’ve put your equipment on.

Have them check the back straps aren’t twisted. If your harness features a D-ring on the back, your buddy should check it’s positioned correctly between your shoulder blades.

Your safety checks will be pointless if you anchor your lanyard wrong, so be sure you attach it to your harness correctly and secure it to a suitable anchor point.

Fall-restraint lanyards typically attach to the sides of a harness, whereas fall-arrest lanyards usually attach to a D-ring, which should be marked with the letter “A.” You must never confuse the two, as a lanyard will be ineffective if it’s attached to the wrong point on a harness.

The length of your lanyard or lifeline is also critical. Fall-restraint lanyards must be short enough to keep you from reaching the edge of the work area.

Fall-arrest lanyards are a little trickier. When calculating the necessary lanyard length, you need to consider your height and the length of the deceleration device, plus a little extra to be safe. Contact the lanyard manufacturer to confirm the minimum clearance height of the lanyard you’re using.

• Treat your harnesses and lanyards like the life-saving equipment they are.
• Ensure a competent person has inspected your equipment within the last six months, and never use equipment with missing or unreadable serial numbers.
• Take your time during pre-use checks to avoid missing critical faults, such as minor cuts in the webbing or damaged shock absorbers.
• Adjust your harness correctly, ensuring it’s tight but not restrictive, and always have a buddy check the parts you can’t see.
• Attach your lanyard to the correct point on your harness and ensure the length is appropriate to either prevent or arrest a fall, depending on your system.

Workers have the final say on equipment safety, but they can’t be expected to inspect their gear, too. You need someone else competent on your team who can handle thorough equipment inspections and understands how to document them in line with regulations.

Our online Safety Harness Inspection course teaches you how to spot faults in every component of personal fall protection and breaks the inspection process down step by step. It also includes digital checklists to help you conduct and record your inspections and share them with equipment users.