A good customer of ours brought this to our attention. This situation has the potential to be so dangerous that we have decided to warn our customer base with a dedicated page. We take safety VERY seriously. We have the best safety record in the industry. Non-Stop has NEVER collapsed in use since we began in 1976.
Occasionally, another manufacturer will make components they say are “compatible” with genuine Non-Stop scaffolding. It may look the same and fit together the same but be completely inferior to genuine Non-Stop components. For instance, the silver bridge components in the picture below look a lot like genuine Non-Stop parts but there are differences and they do not fit on the Non-Stop towers in the picture. A customer sent us these pictures from the field, asking for advice on how to make these bridge components fit on our scaffolding properly. We were horrified to discover that these were look-alike bridges that, had the scaffold been decked, loaded, and cranked up right then, would almost assuredly COLLAPSE. Murphy’s Law applies all to well in construction, meaning if something can be assembled incorrectly, one day it will be. Let’s say this was the end of the work day, this crew was sent to another job, and different workers showed up the next morning and planked it and started working not knowing it wasn’t right. Imagine the outcome – we’ve all seen it happen.
It’s obvious the company that made these silver components attempted to copy our design, but they made changes. It’s unknow if they used the same grade of steel that we use to make our towers and bridges. You can go to a steel service center and buy 2-inch square tubing that looks exactly like ours but has less than a THIRD OF our tensile strength (all of our high-tensile structural tubing is made for us by one particular mill in the US). We don’t know if the look-alike bridge trusses have the same strength as ours, and NO ONE can tell by looking at them. They may only be one-third as strong as Non-Stop but it’s a safe bet your men will load them the same.
OSHA says “Scaffold components manufactured by different manufacturers shall not be intermixed unless the components fit together without force and the scaffold’s structural integrity is maintained by the user.” What OSHA is overlooking here is that the components may look and fit the same but be vastly inferior and there is know way for your “competent person” to know. The structural integrity can be reduced by two-thirds or more!
Non-Stop Scaffolding is engineered to work together as a complete system. One non-genuine Non-Stop component can change the load capacity of the entire structure. For instance, OSHA standards dictate a 4:1 safety factor in scaffold structures, yet one company makes a look-alike Non-Stop base tower with less than a 3:1 safety factor! Genuine Non-Stop base towers have an 11:1 safety factor. If you use that inferior base tower in a Non-Stop structure at its maximum height, it will most likely COLLAPSE.
In the picture below, the truss components are not the same as Non-Stop and can easily be installed wrong. The look-alike is silver where Non-Stop is green.
In the picture above, the truss and the component that supports the planks (the bridge bracket) are not locked together as ours do. The silver components cannot be locked together without physically deforming the truss. At this stage of assembly, your men could plank the scaffold, load it up, and go to work. The bridge bracket would most likely slide off the truss, causing a catastrophic collapse.
Contrast this to the picture below showing our green Non-Stop components locked together. This is the only way a Non-Stop bridge can be assembled correctly – so that it is locked together.
Background: A salesman talked our customer into trying this look-alike bridge on our scaffold. When it did not go together like genuine Non-Stop does, the customer took the picture you see and sent it to us asking for advice on how to install it.
The bottom line is this: Genuine Non-Stop components have a spotless safety record because our ENTIRE system is engineered for 100% safety. ALWAYS use ONLY genuine Non-Stop Scaffolding.