Evaluation and Testing of Building-Supported Facade Access Equipment

Abstract

The United States’ Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has numerous requirements that govern the design, use, evaluation, and testing of facade access equipment. These requirements are part of the US Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). Although the relevant structural requirements are contained within 29CFR1910 and 29CFR1926, the requirements are interspersed with thousands of other requirements that are not related to structural engineering, and the provisions that are related to structural engineering are often less than clear in terms of their intent due to their use of terminology that is not common in the structural engineering profession. For this reason, the Architectural Engineering Institute (AEI) sponsored an effort to develop a guideline to help engineers better understand the structural engineering requirements that govern the design, evaluation, and testing of permanent building-supported facade access equipment. The purpose of this specific paper is to introduce attendees and readers to OSHA’s requirements and explain how new and existing facade access equipment can be load tested to verify that it meets the minimum requirements of OSHA. This paper is part of three other companion papers regarding facade access systems, including “Introduction to the Guideline for the Structural Design, Evaluation, and Testing of Permanent Building-Supported Facade Access Equipment, and Commentary” (Lewis et al., 2014), “Structural Design Recommendations for Building-Supported Facade Access Equipment” (Searer et al., 2014), and “Case Studies and Practical Examples Related to Facade Access Equipment” (Larson et al., 2014).