Construction scaffolding is used to access elements of construction. For example, while building a structure, wall coverings are often installed from the exterior of the building. To access the walls, or in many cases to build the walls, a walking platform is constructed around the building every 6′8″ or so to allow the average sized construction worker to paint, plaster, frame, lay bricks, concrete blocks or other wall treatments. Usually, a scaffold frame structure is constructed with “frames” 3′, 4′ or 5′ wide and lateral bracing called cross braces stabilizes the frames. Handrails are added along with a walking platform of wood or metal planks of various lengths to provide a walking platform.

In tightly confined spaces such as London, crews are rightly concerned about parking and transport of equipment. Consequently, tight compact loading of the equipment is required. In those situations, 1.9″steel or aluminum tubes are used for the structure for both vertical and horizontal components. Wood, metal or other composite planks are added for the walking structure. By using “Tube and Clamp” as we call it in the United States, or “Pipe and Couplers” as other countries refer to this type scaffolding, one crew of 3 can fill their day with a very small truck due to the stacking efficiency of these systems.

In industrial applications such as found in refineries, hospitals, tanks, and many other situations, “Systems Scaffold” with predesignated coupling devices are almost exclusively used. This is because of the many pipes and protuberances found in industrial work environments and often become the required method due to their flexibility and speed of design.

Scaffolding can be very simple or extremely complex. The smarter the erector, the simpler he makes it look. For example, I observed my General Superintendent arrive at a job site to observe some new men erecting scaffolding on a high rise building. The younger guys were sweating up a storm as the “pumped” planks up to the scaffolding. My Super stepped into the pass line and took the planks handed to him, placed them on the headers of the scaffold frames, then pushed them to the man above him. He worked for about an hour, without breaking a sweat because he knew how to put up scaffold planks the easy way.

He then took a pulley up to the top level, installed it and a rope and told four men in the pass line to come to the top. He went to the bottom and installed a small motorized pulley with a capstan to the bottom scaffold leg, showed the man on the bottom row to tie the planks securely to the rope and instead of having 14 men standing in a pass line, he had the smallest man run the lifting device to lift 200–250 # of scaffold planks, bracing and frames at a time, and the rest of the crew spreading and installing the scaffold components and ties to the structure. The scaffold went up more than 3 times faster and safer and the newbies learned a very important lesson. Work smarter and you sweat less, are safer and put up much more scaffold in a day.