Mr. Dibnah is a master craftsman. he makes scaling this chimney look like a sunday stroll.
I'm starting to think they aren't real... everyone is so sure that "OSHA won't like [that which is about to be attempted]" and it hasn't ever stopped anyone from doing profoundly stupid stuff, except for new guys. Still, I've never seen them, been alerted to their presence, or met anyone who has (I've been asking for 20+ years.)
obviously they are real, but they are in no way the ever-present threat they are made out to be.
That being said, they're like the SEC (which only has around 4800) in that they heavily rely on employees (and incidental bystanders) to report unsafe worksites. The fact that you haven't had to interact with them is either a really good or really bad thing.
Every person on your site is a OHSA inspector in disguise.
I have never seen these prognostications come true. It really seems like it’s just a way for naysayers to rain on peoples parades, or appeal to authority as an way of stopping people from doing things when really they just don’t like them.
It leaves an extremely unpleasant taste in the mouth and it’s an absolute must to probe this kind of thing when interviewing candidates.
Or you know, i’m not going to die to maximise your profit. You go right ahead and circumvent sane and safe working practices as long as it is only your life on the line.
I’m talking about a random colleague seeing their peer wanting to do something and their reaction being “I don’t think you should do that because of a contrived reason which an auditor will say is against security / safety best practices.” Except they don't know this – their just making stuff up to be disruptive, show-off, sound-clever, boost their esteem, etc.
Bystanders whose sole contribution is to think of reasons not to do something — without taking responsibility for getting stuff done — are net-negative strong no-hires.
He would proudly promote that he would climb those towers after drinking pints of beer down the pub. He's a lovable person and I've watched nearly all of his TV work but safety was not his priority.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DMCSSMoPELU
More problematic than the work at heights, where the one at risk was mostly Fred himself.
Doing those chimney climbs safely, with fall protection, is pretty easy these days. It's so easy that I've seen videos of urban explorers, base jumpers, etc. using perfectly good fall protection, even while doing illegal things!
Remember we're looking at a video from 1978: modern fall protection gear simply wasn't widely available back then.