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Height Safety with Kerrect
Crane and Lifting interviewed our managing director Craig Rowland about Kerrect and how and why we ‘wrap’ buildings. When thinking of what wrapping a building involves, what we do may not come to mind. We aren’t talking about with Christmas paper or a fancy new colour like a car, we’re talking about wrapping a building for height safety. Despite the awareness and progression of height safety in the construction sector, incidents and falls occur all too frequently and these continue to involve workers and their tools.
With over 20 years’ experience, Kerrect’s goal is to protect workers and deliver forward thinking products around height safety. We are an innovative company, always looking to the future when developing and introducing new products for our clients and the safety of their employees.
Beginning in the rope access industry, the company has come a long way and has gone from strength to strength. For our managing director, Craig Rowland, Kerrect has been his passion and he has been proud to improve safety on sites around Australia. Craig’s dedication and commitment to height safety is reflective in his work and Kerrect’s success in preventing height related incidents at work.
“Our background in heights and rope access, coupled with our product range, gives us the capability to provide solutions to any height-related problem. The combination of services we provide were not something that really existed in Australia back in 2000, and there were many unaddressed risks associated with work at height.”
Kerrects safety nets are designed to provide an extra level of protection for the workers at height, but also overhead protection to those below. This is achieved through Kerrect’s two-layed nets; the first designed to catch persons falling from height and the second, much finer, layer designed is to catch tools and smaller objects or materials that might be dropped or become dislodged from a building. These nets allow work in the areas below to progress safely and unhindered.
Rowland explains how the netting was introduced and what role it plays on work sites for those at height. “We introduced it for overhead protection – initially – because the construction techniques already had a built-in degree of safety, particularly around roofing,” he said.
“By introducing safety netting, it means that we can not only carry out work safely at height, but we can make the surrounding environment safe for people carrying out work, as the two-layer netting system also makes it safe for people in the area below where the work is being carried out,” Rowland said.
After Kerrect introduced these netting practices over 20 years ago it took a while for the construction industry to recognise the importance of these alternative systems. Our nets are now used on many worksites across Australia and we recently installed what is probably the largest system in the southern hemisphere, close to 50,000 square metres.
“We soon realised that overhead protection doesn’t just have to be horizontal to catch things as they fall, but logically could be vertical, or really any shape, to encapsulate and contain before the fall takes place…. in other words prevention, rather than cure.
This led us to start ‘wrapping’ buildings and structures with engineered containment netting systems.”
The wrapping of buildings is not only for new construction but older buildings can also benefit from it. Wrapping is a finer mesh that will contain certain objects or even parts of the building itself. The wrapping of buildings has become an important addition to Kerrect’s height safety offering, providing numerous solutions and preventing damage or injury.
We believe to deliver the best service to those in the construction industry we must invest in high quality training. Therefore, all our crew are individually trained, undergoing formal training to receive their installer certificates then working alongside existing crew all while maintaining a strictly controlled training regime. This process not only trains our team to install, but understand what they’re installing and why they’re installing it.
Kerrect’s bespoke height safety, rope access and safety netting services have become a pivotal aspect for our company to ensure those working at height are doing so safely. They open up opportunities for buildings to be maintained as opposed to being torn down. They also allow for architects to get crazier with the designs of their buildings, and everyone loves to see this.