Enhancing safe work at heights around radio sites
Whether you’re a contractor, comms worker or facility manager, it’s vital to know the safety steps for working near radio transmitting antennas.
Radio has been an efficient and cost-effective method of communication for over a 100 years and today, critical communications, land mobile radio, mobile telephony and broadcast services are essential to our daily lives. The communications industry is well versed in safe work with radio services; however, it is evident that other ‘workers at heights’ have a variable level of awareness and understanding of EME safe work practices.
Safe work at heights is a long-held priority for any worker and in the mobile telecommunications industry safety is paramount to our operations. Height workers need to deal with a variety of hazards on a daily basis, and tragically in some situations lives have been lost or permanently changed due to falls from elevated work areas.
When it comes to working with radiocommunications and mobile transmitters, electromagnetic energy (EME) exposures are governed by rigorous safety standards and safe work practices. This also includes work on radio and television broadcast transmitters where specialised care and training is required due to the high-powered equipment.
Why is this an issue? The increased usage of mobile and wireless services has resulted in an increase in the number of installations, and many of them in dense areas use existing structures — building rooftops, facades, light poles, traffic signs and street furniture for the smaller base stations referred to as small cells. The Mobile Carriers Forum (known as the MCF, a division of the Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association, AMTA) has developed the AMTA-branded ‘RF Safety Program’ to undertake compliance and safety assessments of all mobile phone base station installations nationally. The program utilises a national database for site details, settings and site safety documentation.
The compliance assessments are undertaken by NATA accredited independent assessors who provide Compliance Certificates for the sites to ensure they meet the exposure standards set by the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency (ARPANSA) Radiation Protection Standard (RPS No 3), required in the ACMA radiocommunications licences.
To assist with EME safety, the MCF carriers (Optus, Telstra, TPG and Vodafone Hutchison Australia) engage the independent assessors to prepare a Site Safety document known as the EME Guide. The EME Guide is a document that is available to the site owner or facility manager free of charge to assist with their management of safe work on the site.
When it comes to workers who may not be on the site, but are working in close proximity to the EME exclusion zones around an antenna or cluster of antennas, EME awareness is key. As with any risk or safety limitation, training, awareness and risk controls must be in place. AMTA and the MCF are focused on increasing this awareness so that employers and workers at heights include EME in their safe work management plans.
AMTA and the MCF are taking a lead role in this awareness with the release of the RadioWorkSafe mobile app, which is designed to help building maintenance staff, height workers and facility managers with information to provide safe access around radiocommunications and mobile base station antennas. Whether you are a contractor, specially trained communications worker or facility manager, it’s important to know the basic safety steps for working around radio transmitting antennas and mobile base stations. RadioWorkSafe provides this information in an easily accessible application.
At the Melbourne Comms Connect launch for RadioWorkSafe, the app was described as the ‘Dial Before You Dig’ for height workers. The RadioWorkSafe app includes resources to assist workers understand where mobile phone transmitter equipment is in operation, who to contact, where they can access training and safety videos, and other important information resources. The safety checklist available on your mobile is a great feature and very easy for all workers to use.
RadioWorkSafe is free and is available on your mobile, tablet and pc at www.radioworksafe.com.au.
Click before you climb
Today’s community expects to be ‘always connected’ and this means we need an extensive network of base stations and radiocommunications sites to provide continuous mobile coverage. Knowing where radiocommunications and mobile base station antennas are located and how to work safely around them is critical for a range of occupations.
RadioWorkSafe already has global appeal, and earlier this year, Mike Wood, Chair AMTA Health and Safety (EME) Committee and Telstra’s EME specialist, spent significant time in Europe with mobile operators and EME safety equipment manufacturers where the new app was put through its paces. Mike reported, “The educational resources, safety videos and easy-to-use checklist was a universal feature suited to a global market.”
The app is a key element in AMTA’s RF Safety Program, which is world leading in providing an open, transparent and informative approach to safe work around radio transmitters. RadioWorkSafe provides workers with location-based safety information to assist facility managers, technicians and height workers assess the on-site hazards when preparing for safe work.
RadioWorkSafe
RadioWorkSafe is AMTA’s flagship RF Safety educational initiative, providing the basic safety steps for working on base stations, buildings and other facilities with radio transmitting antennas. RadioWorkSafe also provides a simple approach to RF safety education.
The features available to all workers free of charge through RadioWorkSafe.com.au include:
- basic safety steps
- a Safe Work checklist
- training videos
- fact sheets
- information resources
- site contacts
- safety bookmark.
RFNSA and MobileSiteSafety
The RadioWorkSafe program builds on a primary resource of site safety information housed in AMTA’s Radiofrequency National Site Archive (RFNSA). If you’re a builder or maintainer working on new construction, upgrades or maintenance, your workers should know where to find information about RF sources and know how to work safely around them.
AMTA has developed the RFNSA database (rfnsa.com.au) and its mobile version MobileSiteSafety.com.au, which shows a map of your location and the mobile telecommunication sites nearby. Each site has Safe Work information and carrier contacts to assist with your site safety implementation. The EME Guide should be available from the facility manager or owner or from the carriers present on the site, and signage will also make visitors aware of areas where exclusion zones may exist. The ACMA Register of Radio licences can also assist in identifying transmitter licensees if they are not shown on the RFNSA or MobileSiteSafety.
It is also very common for a development adjacent to a building that hosts radio antennas to miss the potential for work on, in or near EME exclusion zones during planning, demolition and construction until the new structure reaches a similar height and someone notices the antennas nearby. Architects, planners and designers could also benefit from EME awareness for their site inspections and designs going forward.
If you are a first responder in an emergency situation there may be many hazards present, but a quick check of the sites around the location can alert those in command of the situation if there is a need for management of work around the EME sources. Examples might be firefighters in an overhead appliance fighting a factory fire or rescue workers working to recover a person from a building site.
EME awareness training and PPE
Like any workplace safety matter, employers and workforce managers must ensure their workers gain awareness of EME through training and understanding of the resources available for identifying the radio service operators. The Radio WorkSafe app identifies a number of accredited EME awareness training agencies and there are several other independent trainers available in the Australian market.
The use of personal RF monitors is important if your workers are operating very close to exclusion zones; however, the purchase and calibration costs are only justifiable where the risk is commonly encountered. The usual approach for work other than on the antennas is to contact the carrier or radio service operator to reduce or switch off power to the source (an outage) or other temporary arrangements if necessary.
The AMTA RF Safety Program has also been adopted by a number of federal, state and local government, utilities, resources and enterprise radio service operators. The advantage of this wide participation in the program is that the assessment of shared sites is fully cumulative and not just limited to those of carrier systems. The program aims to provide EME safe work information free of charge for all employers and workers to work safely around the mobile carriers’ and partner radio service operators’ antennas.
The message we are passionate about is ‘Click before you climb’, and this should be the mantra for all work at heights. We welcome your input to making this work for everyone.
The AMTA RF Safety Program
AMTA takes EME safety very seriously and the RF Safety Program is world leading in providing an open, transparent and informative approach to EME Safe Work. AMTA’s innovations include:
- national RFNSA database for all base stations in Australia
- national antenna database — consistency of data
- MobileSiteSafety app for access to the data base
- YouTube channel for RF safety education
- collaborative site data sharing between carriers
- national accredited RF safety assessment process
- Environmental EME Reporting
- RadioWorkSafe app — combines all of the above into an accessible program for all workers.
The program can be accessed by radio service operators, particularly where they share facilities with the mobile carriers.
Tony Paul and Mike Wood (GM EME Strategy, Governance & Risk Management Telstra) will give a presentation on ‘5G and the environment for safe work at heights’ at the Comms Connect conference in Melbourne in November. Full details are available on the Comms Connect website.
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