'Development of Simplified Grading Rules for Scaffold Boards' sponsored by HSE

TimberSolve, in collaboration with both the Health & Safety Executive and the major UK suppliers of scaffold boards, has recently completed this project which derived new visual grading rules and machine grading settings for 38 x 225mm scaffold boards. These grading rules were derived from analysis of the results of the grading and structural testing of over 300 boards undertaken at Brighton University. They provide an insight into the relative efficacy of visual and machine grading as elaborated upon in the paper below which will be presented at the 2002 WCTE conference in Malaysia.

2002 WCTE paper, by DJ Pope, PD Rodd, JP Marcroft and LRJ Whale, entitled 'Development of grading rules for scaffold boards'. (220Kb)

These proposed grading rules have recently been approved by the BSI committee B/514/42 and will shortly be incorporated into the next revision to BS2482. This next edition of BS2482 should facilitate the use of a unified set of grading rules across the scaffolding industry and render redundant the plethora of 'Trade' Standards of unknown technical basis which are currently widely used.

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