Retrofitting and Replacing Permanent Access Systems: The Second Installation Is the One the Owner Runs
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada Every permanent access system installed on a building or structure will, if the asset lives long enough, present its owner with the same decision: the system has aged past the point where routine service sustains it, and something structural must now be done. […]
BMU Beneficial Use and Construction Use: Separating Interim Use from Acceptance
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada Two kinds of interim use arise in the period between a building maintenance unit’s testing and its normal service life. Beneficial use is the operation of the system before acceptance is complete — potentially while findings from factory or site acceptance testing remain […]
Buying a BMU from an Overseas Manufacturer: What Protects the Owner Between Order and Acceptance
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada When a building maintenance unit is purchased from an overseas manufacturer, the owner takes on a set of questions that a domestic purchase poses more gently: distance, which changes what the owner can see and when; a delivery chain, which may place intermediaries […]
Suspended Access Accidents: What an Engineering Investigation Examines
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada An engineering investigation of a suspended access accident — a building maintenance unit, a suspended platform, a fall-protection or rope descent system — examines how the event came to be, and its examination can extend across the asset’s lifecycle rather than stopping at […]
Façade Access Design: The Decisions That Must Be Made Early
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada A small set of façade access decisions must be made early in design — in concept and schematic, while massing, structure, and façade geometry are still fluid — because they are decisions the rest of the project progressively locks in place. They are: […]
BMU Factory and Site Acceptance Testing: What FAT and SAT Actually Verify — and What They Don’t
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada A factory acceptance test, or FAT, is the testing of a building maintenance unit at the manufacturer’s works, before shipment: the machine is assembled, exercised through its functional sequences, tested under load, its safety devices demonstrated, and its documentation reviewed against the purchase […]
Common Failure Modes in Building Maintenance Units: A Field Engineer’s Perspective
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada Building maintenance units fail in recognizable ways. Across the systems I have examined and tested, the conditions that produce failures cluster into a small taxonomy: the drivetrain and hoisting machinery; the wire rope and the components that guide it; the interface between the […]
BMU Inspection and Certification: Who Is Actually Responsible, and What the Certificate Does Not Tell You
By Uwe Janssen · Rauch Safety & Engineering · Las Vegas, Nevada For a building owner, contracting out the inspection, testing, maintenance, or certification of a building maintenance unit does not, by itself, transfer the owner’s underlying responsibility for the condition and safe operation of the permanent access system. The manufacturer, the installer, and the […]