Certified Rope Splicer

[DerekSmith]

Clip from Proclimber.

Andrew Lewis has many years experience in arboriculture & off-road driving, coming as he does, from a practical background within the tree-climbing industry. He has spent many years working in utility arboriculture, as a freelance climber and as an arboricultural contractor. He is an approved NPTC assessor, LOLER inspector, certified rope splicer and a Tree-works Auditor for the regional electricity company. Andrew still remains an active climber and has worked and trained others in arboriculture and off-road driving in many countries over the past few years. He firmly believes in continual personal development, which is essential to keep up to date with all the changes within the arb industry.

He is a certified rope splicer.  So how do you get to be a certified rope splicer?  Does the IGKT have any part in this process?

[Lasse_C]

Very good point! Certified by whom, or what?
If there is to be any point whatsoever in certifying, who/whatever certifies must be competent to evaluate the competence of the person to be certified.

There are, naturally, a lot of people both inside and outside the IGKT who are utterly competent in the art of splicing - but to take it upon themselves to hand out some sort of certification is something that, in my eyes, requires having a LOT to back it up with!

Lasse C

[squarerigger]

Hi Derek,

Certified by whom, and how is the splicer to maintain his or her certification?  What does certification mean for the person seeking a certificate and what does it mean to the person for whom the splice is made?  In the USA there is an organization by the name of OSHA (Cal-OSHA in California) which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.  They do not certify splicers.  The Unions do not, as far as I am aware, certify splicers.

I think it would be dangerous to think that a splice is certified or accorded any kind of status by anything other than reputation and insurance.  Maybe someone knows about certified splicers who work for Fall Protection equipment makers?

As for the IGKT or any other body, no matter how august, it would be a tremendous leap of faith in the splicer to say they are certified - trained, perhaps, but not certified!

SR

[Dan_Lehman]

Splicing certification is offered by Yale Cordage for their own cordage,
and I believe that other organizations have similar certification schemes;
confer http://www.atraes.com.au/pages/ropesplicing.asp  .

--dl*
====

[Brion_Toss]

Hello all,
We have long made a practice of destruction-testing splices. Sometimes this is at the request of clients, particularly on the industrial side; sometimes we want to prove the skills of new employees; and sometimes we need to test new splices that we or others have come up with. The data isn't terribly significant without at least a few samples, so we try to get as many in as we can afford/find time to make.
In addition, of course, we check to make sure that our splicers are actually following the directions.  
This could be considered as a basis for certification, and I have long hoped that we could have industry-wide standards on the subject. Yale's program is for Yale's rope only, of course, though their basic constructions might translate to other manufacturers' rope. But what I'm looking for is a set of parameters that could be applied to any rope. We'd need to establish the nominal strength of the rope to begin with, and this means getting meaningful information from the maker. Not always easy. Then we'd need independent testing from a reputable outfit. And then we'd need a central processing entity to record results and distribute certificates.

And it is the certificates that I'm after here, something to put on the wall to show clients that you care enough about the art to go to all that trouble.

The certification process could be extended to all sorts of rigging skills, including load calculations, vector analysis, measuring, specifying hardware, etc. And this letter might be considered an attempt to get this idea finally in motion; anybody have ideas on how to proceed? Might this Guild be in the mix? Rigging is so spectacularly unlicensed, and this needs to change.
Yours,
Brion Toss

[Willeke]

Thanks Brion,
it is good to hear a proffesionals view on this subject.
(And I have to say that I enjoy reading what you write on many subjects on your site.)

Willeke

[marlinspiker2000]

Strangely enough, I just recently broached the subject of splicing certification.  I am a Bosun on a U. S. Flagged Merchant Vessel, and contacted the Technical Director at the Cordage Institute, here in the U.S.  He said, they visited the concept but, could not come to a conclusive standard.  He also said, that even though some manufacturers have in-house splicing certification, don't plan on that company covering the liability issue.  The PABPRES at Knotheads World Wide and I were discussing this in forum there just the other day.  We all must be getting psychic.  Frank G.

There might be a system of certification, I have not considered.  Having worked in the offshore oil field, The American Petroleum Institute API covers all certification for lifting slings and crane rigging operations.  API covers a broad area of standards and safety items, because splicing operations are heavily used in this industry they may have a system of standards.  I will research it and get back to the forum on my findings.

[aknotter]

I can, without any doubt, certify that the last splice I made is, indeed a splice! (How good is another matter?)

[marlinspiker2000]

API does not have any certification available.  So far, the trial attorneys have not gotten into our business.  I guess I was certified by BM1 Osborne in 1981 when he threatened to cancel my liberty if it did not finish splicing mooring lines on a payday.