VIDEO: TOOLING UP – Honeywell Miller Fall Protection

Narrator: This video is brought to you by Honeywell. The future is what we make it. If you're looking for real world insights, tips from leading industry experts, the latest trends in products and technology, you've come to the right place. From MSC Industrial Supply, this is Tooling Up.

TONI NEARY: Hello and thank you so much for joining us here on Tooling Up. I'm your host, Toni Neary and we're so glad that you're here with us on the MSC YouTube channel. Make sure to click the subscribe button and like this episode as well so you don't miss any of our upcoming episodes. Today, our special guest is Mark Cangemi, and Mark is a fall safety and confined spaces training specialist for Honeywell.

Mark, thank you so much for joining us today.

MARK CANGEMI: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for inviting me.

TONI NEARY: And Mark, I have to say, we love to know a little bit about how folks get started in the industry that we're speaking with. And you are our first degreed safety specialist. So tell us a little bit about how you got your start.

MARK CANGEMI: Yeah, absolutely. So actually, kind of jokingly, this is the absolute perfect job for me. If you would have asked my family when I was a kid, Hey, what's he going to grow up and do? They would have said climb things and talk to people. And turns out going through the paces that I have with life. I grew up working on a farm and doing construction.

From there, I went to college. I got a degree in occupational health and safety management, all this stuff I should have learned before I was in ladders and backhoe buckets and doing all the stuff that we used to do, right. So from there, I've specialized the last 12 years just in training. In 11 years in fall safety, fall rescue, and confined space safety.

TONI NEARY: And you have a really strong skill set. So, you know, again, you're talking about all the different places you've been, the different safety and fall protection safety standards that you know, but you're not just degreed. You also have a CSP certificate, right?

MARK CANGEMI: Yeah. Thank you. So CSP stands for Certified Safety Professional. That is the highest level overall safety certification through the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, which is the leading entity in that certification realm for the entire safety industry. So yeah, I was able to check off that box early in my career as well. And now I just focus as far as being a subject matter expert and this discipline of fall safety and confined space.

TONI NEARY: And it's amazing and your passion comes through. But I know from the first time we talked, just your, your knowledge is pretty amazing. And I think this is a great time for us to talk about the latest round of Honeywell innovations, and really what prompted some of the changes in the new products that you're launching.

MARK CANGEMI: Yeah, absolutely. So there has been some major changes from a regulatory compliance side for the world of work in terms of fall protection systems with fixed ladders. So if we go to any refinery, power plant, steel mill, anything like that, construction sites, we're going to find fixed ladders, potentially hundreds or even thousands of them on job sites. Well, historically, what we're used to seeing as sort of a fall protection, fall preventive method, on fixed ladders is what's called a cage or a well.

However, it's been well documented throughout the years that there have been workers that have fallen off of fixed ladders. The cage did nothing. In fact, they got hurt worse when they fell because of the cage that the regulatory bodies have gotten together. They've addressed and identified this hazard. And as of 2017, OSHA regs updated the expectations, standards and requirements for fall protection systems on fixed ladders to help prevent these incidents that we're looking at.

So as far as the manufacturers out there, you know, Honeywell, what we're doing is identifying the world of work. What are the jobs that these people are doing out there? How can we best make fall protection solutions for them to keep them safe while they're doing just their job?

TONI NEARY: Let's take a little bit of a deeper dive into some of the specific products and solutions that you have to offer.

MARK CANGEMI: So when we look at specifically ladders, safety climbing systems, we have two standard breakdowns of that. One is going to be some sort of a rail tube or channel type system that gets physically bolted and mounted to a fixed ladder. And the other variation is going to be a steel cable that then a worker is going to hook up and connect to via a little shuttle device.

With that being said, the products that Honeywell has in those two categories of solutions is going to be the Miller GlideLoc® system or the Honeywell GlideLoc® system. There's actually a car type shuttle that will go into that ladder to provide false safety while ascending and descending. Another similar kind of system is what we call the Saf-T-Climb system, and that is more like a clamp that's going to go on to a steel tube, whereas the other one was in a channel.

Then as far as the cable system that we have, ours is called Vi-Go System, the Vi-Go Ladder safety climbing system. And it is another one of these shuttles which we can demonstrate. And we also have some literature as part of this as well that everybody can review to go over it. But those are some of the most common that we have.

So another one is a really brilliant fall protection system that we call it top ladder bracket with SRL and what that is, is actually a piece of our Vi-Go that mounts on the top of a fixed ladder that then allows the employer to install what's called a self-retracting lifeline to it. And then that is a method of providing fall protection for that worker.

So, now rather than having something physically mounted all the way up through the ladder and having to have a shuttle system that connects to the front D ring of a harness, which also requires a specialized harness to accommodate, with the top ladder bracket an SRL system. A worker can use a standard full body harness with a back D ring.

There's a lot of advantages of that system in the field. It's very well received. There's also a rope vertical lifeline system, a rope that can be dropped alongside that fixed ladder. And then you have a trailing style rope grab that would get installed on to it. And then the sixth solution here to mention is what we just call 100% connection with a twin self-retracting lifeline or self-retracting lanyard style connecting fall protection system.

You've got a hook up, hook up, disconnect and continue that motion throughout the ascent and descent in order to stay safe and be compliant. And often times we have to do that 100% connection process in order to even install all of these other systems that we're talking about here.

TONI NEARY: Mark, this has been awesome. I really appreciate your time today.

MARK CANGEMI: Absolutely.

TONI NEARY: And Honeywell is really working to be innovative with solutions and options, not just in the hardware, but also the support and installation for making sure that everybody is being safe out there. If you've enjoyed our conversation with Mark as much as I have, you can go and check out all of these Honeywell tools at www.mscdirect.com/miller and we'll see you next time on Tooling Up.

Narrator: Want more insights and ideas to improve the efficiency and productivity of your operations? Check out the Tooling Up video playlist to hear tips that can take your company to the next level. And subscribe to our channel so you won't miss out.