Work at Height in Autumn: Wind, Rain, When to Stop
The wind that was bearable in the morning is throwing OSB boards off the roof by the afternoon. When the regulations tell you to stop work at height.
Tips on PIP inspections, OHS documentation, ORZ, IBWR and regulations for small construction firms (PKD 43).
The wind that was bearable in the morning is throwing OSB boards off the roof by the afternoon. When the regulations tell you to stop work at height.
The first frost always arrives "unexpectedly". A checklist for site organisation, welfare facilities, equipment and documents before winter.
In November, by half past four the crew is working by phone torchlight. What lighting the regulations require and which works after dark are banned.
A grinder without a guard and a drill with tape on the cable are the first things an inspector sees. What checks the regulations require for power tools.
"He's got his own firm, he answers for himself" - Article 304 of the Labour Code says otherwise. Your OSH duties towards B2B crews on site.
The stepladder stands in for a leaning ladder and the missing rung is "common knowledge". When ladder work is allowed and how to set one up correctly.
Posting a crew abroad is more than the journey: an A1 certificate from ZUS, a posting notification, local pay conditions and OSH duties that stay yours.
You take on a subcontractor for the facade, because your own crew can't keep up. Contract signed, price agreed, the lads go up on the scaffolding.
A steel fixer cuts his forearm on protruding rebar. Blood is flowing and the crew goes looking for the first-aid kit - only to find it in a locked container.
After a fatal accident on site, duties run by the hour: securing the scene, notifications, the investigation team and two tracks, PIP and the prosecutor.
The seven failings inspectors find most often on sites: training, medical examinations, risk assessment, work at height, PPE, BIOZ and illegal employment.
Construction work in heat and frost: when you must provide cold or hot drinks and preventive meals, places to warm up, and what the PIP checks.
A firm gets a job: demolish an old hall to make room for a new warehouse. The crew moves in with hammers, starts from the middle, cuts out whatever they can.
A foundation trench, two metres deep, vertical walls with no support at all. A worker climbs down to fix the formwork, and at that moment the wall slides in.
From 8 July 2026, an inspector from the PIP (the Polish Labour Inspectorate) walks onto a construction site with a fatter ticket book and new tools.
On one site your bricklaying crew is working, next to them an electrical firm, and on the other side roofers from another subcontractor.
Remember how people used to say: "small firm, two blokes on site, who'd ever come looking at us"? That doesn't work anymore.
A demolition-hammer operator works his eighth hour and by evening his ears are ringing. In five years' time it will turn out he can no longer hear high tones.
Until recently the logic was simple: if the PIP inspector (the Polish Labour Inspectorate) didn't set foot on site, there was no inspection.
PIP ran 61,900 inspections in 2024 and plans around 50,000 in 2026. What those numbers, the KSeF targeting algorithm and the 5,000 zl fine mean for you.
The crew is stripping an old asbestos-cement roof because the client wants a new one. Nobody has a mask, the sheets shatter into pieces, dust flies.
Picture an inspection on site. The PIP inspector (the Polish Labour Inspectorate) asks for the occupational risk assessment. You don't have it.
Cranes on a construction site: which equipment is under UDT supervision, the operation decision, operator qualifications and documents to keep.
What an occupational risk assessment (ORZ) is, why each construction job needs its own, how the Risk Score method works and where firms slip up.
Doing work at height, digging a trench or bringing a crane onto a developer's site? Without an IBWR (safe-work instructions) you go nowhere.
The scaffolding stands against the facade, the crew waiting to climb up and plaster. The foreman gives the signal: "we're going up".
You drive onto a site, the main contractor waves papers around, and your head's spinning: "do I need this BIOZ plan or not?".
OHS regulation changes and PIP inspection cases, every other week.