Work at Height OSH: The Documents PIP Checks

You fall off a ladder, off scaffolding, off the edge of a floor slab - and that's it. On a building site this is no abstraction. In 2024, 49 people died on Polish construction sites, and falls from height are the most common cause. Do you know what the National Labour Inspectorate (PIP) finds when it walks onto a site? On 77% of the sites inspected, there are gaps in the safeguards for work at height. These aren't isolated slip-ups - it's the rule. In this post we'll work through it step by step: what work at height actually is, what you physically need on site, and which papers have to sit in the folder that PIP requires for work at height. If you don't want to put it all together from scratch, BudoReady gives you ready-made templates - instructions, risk assessments and safe work execution instructions (IBWR) for work at height, ready to fill in with your company's details.

Key points in brief

• Work at height means work carried out more than 1 m above floor or ground level - a definition set by regulation, not a matter of convention.
• Collective protection first (guardrails, nets, scaffolding), and only where that isn't possible - a harness. Not the other way round.
• A harness only works as a complete set: full-body harness + energy absorber + anchor point with adequate load capacity. A belt on its own is scrap.
• The worker must hold a medical certificate with the note "work at height above 3 m", occupational health and safety (OSH) training and job-specific instruction.
• The full set of documents: occupational risk assessment (ORZ), safe work execution instruction (IBWR), scaffolding acceptance reports, medical certificates, training records.

Work at height - from how many metres does this regime apply?

This is the first trap. Many foremen think "height" only starts at the second storey. Not true. Under the Regulation of the Minister of Labour and Social Policy of 26 September 1997 (§ 105–110), work at height is work carried out on a surface located at least 1 metre above floor or ground level.

One metre. So if you're standing on the second rung of a ladder, you're already "at height" as the rules define it. Safeguards already apply to you, and you already need a person with the right medical certificate.

There is one exception: work is not considered work at height when it is carried out on a surface that, on all sides up to a height of at least 1.5 m, is enclosed by solid walls or walls with glazed windows - or is fitted with other permanent structures protecting against a fall. So an enclosed room with normal walls is not work at height. The edge of a floor slab with no guardrail - very much so.

Collective protection comes before individual protection - end of discussion

This is the rule most often broken on site, because a harness is "simpler". Except the rules set it in the opposite order, and the inspector looks at exactly this.

First you have a duty to apply collective protection measures:

• guardrails - a top rail at 1.1 m, a toe board (kick plate) of at least 0.15 m at floor level and an intermediate rail at half height,
• safety and catch nets - to catch both people and material,
• scaffolding and working platforms with complete safeguards,
• covers and guards over openings in floor slabs.

Only when collective protection cannot be applied - because, for example, the work is short, localised, on an unusual structure - do you reach for personal protective equipment (PPE), i.e. a harness with a fall-arrest system. This isn't an "either/or" you get to choose. It's an order forced by the rules. If the inspector sees a bloke in a harness where a guardrail could easily have been put up, you have gaps - regardless of the fact that there was a harness.

Harness, energy absorber, anchor point - the complete set or nothing

A waist belt on its own for fall arrest is a relic and a mistake. Today a personal fall-arrest system is three elements that have to work together:

1. Safety harness (full-body harness)

A full-body harness covering the torso and thighs, not just a belt. Selected for size, fitted to the specific worker, checked before use. Torn webbing, abrasions, corroded buckles - out of service.

2. Energy absorber (connecting and shock-absorbing component)

A lanyard with an energy absorber tears in a controlled way during a fall and reduces the jolt force acting on the body to a safe level. Without an absorber, an abrupt stop can in itself cripple the spine.

3. Anchor point with adequate load capacity

The most frequently ignored element. The anchor point must have adequate strength - clipping the lanyard to just any pipe, a piece of rebar or a makeshift hook is an illusion of safety. The point should be secure, ideally above the worker's head.

And on top of that, the key selection rule: minimising the free-fall distance. The higher the anchor point and the shorter the lanyard, the less far a person will fall before the system engages. You calculate the whole distance: lanyard length, absorber deployment, the person's height, a safety margin. If there aren't that many metres of clear space below their feet, the bloke hits the ground despite having a harness. That's why selection isn't done "by eye" - it's a calculation for the specific work station.

Scaffolding - acceptance and inspections, without which you don't go up

Scaffolding is collective protection, but only when it is correctly assembled and accepted. The rules are set out in the Regulation of the Minister of Infrastructure of 6 February 2003 on occupational health and safety during construction works.

What you need to have sorted:

• Acceptance after assembly - scaffolding is only released for use after a formal acceptance recorded in a report. No report, nobody goes up.
• Inspections - daily (before the start of a shift, visual) as well as periodic and ad hoc, e.g. after strong wind, rainfall, or a longer break in use.
• Complete safeguards - full platforms, guardrails, toe boards, access ladders, ties, earthing.
• An information board with the permissible load and the contractor's details.

A missing scaffolding acceptance report is one of the classics during an inspection. The inspector asks for the paper, and the paper isn't there - and things get unpleasant.

Medical examinations - the "above 3 m" note is not a formality

A worker carrying out work at height must hold a valid medical certificate clearing them for work. And here's the crucial detail: if the work takes place above 3 metres, the referral and the certificate must carry an explicit note "work at height above 3 m".

This isn't nit-picking. A general certificate of "fit for work" is not enough for work at height above 3 m. The occupational health doctor assesses fitness specifically for this kind of risk - eyesight, balance, the circulatory system, a tendency to dizziness. If a bloke without that note is working on site, doing façade work on the fourth floor, then formally he has no right to be there. The inspector will spot it straight away, because they start with the documents.

On top of that comes OSH training (initial and periodic) and job-specific instruction - the worker must be trained specifically for the work station where they work at height, and sign off on it.

Which documents you need in the folder

This is the crux, because a PIP inspection starts with the papers, and only then does the inspector go out onto the site. The full set for work at height:

Document	What for
Occupational risk assessment (ORZ)	Documented fall-from-height risk for the given work stations and the protection measures selected.
IBWR (safe work execution instruction)	Step by step, how to carry out a specific job at height safely - sequence, safeguards, fall arrest.
Medical certificates	With the note "work at height above 3 m" where required.
OSH training records	Initial, periodic and job-specific instruction - with signatures.
Scaffolding acceptance reports	Release for use and records of inspections.

The IBWR is the document that most often causes trouble, because it has to be written for a specific job. If you're not sure when it's mandatory and what it must contain, take a look at the post IBWR - when it's mandatory. And if you want to know what inspections really look like and what inspectors most often look for, we've gathered the PIP inspection statistics.

Why this matters more now than a year ago

Because on 8 July 2026 a PIP reform comes into force. The Inspectorate is getting stronger tools, and work at height is the area it watches most closely - for a simple reason: this is where people die. Those 49 deaths in construction in 2024 aren't a statistic for a report. They're real accidents, mostly falls, which could almost always have been stopped by a guardrail, a net or a correctly clipped-in harness.

If your papers are in order and the safeguards are on site, an inspection is a formality. If they're not - it's a fine, an order to stop work, and in the event of an accident the liability falls on you as the employer. The difference between the two is often just a question of whether someone sat down and prepared the documentation beforehand, or tried to improvise during the inspection.

Put it together once, properly - the FULL package from BudoReady

You don't have to write the IBWR or the risk assessment from a blank page. BudoReady gives you ready-made OSH documentation packages for construction micro-companies (PKD 43), in Polish and Ukrainian, ready to fill in with your company's details.

For work at height, the best choice is the FULL package (749 zł, 45 files). It's the only package with a complete set of IBWRs - 6 types of work, including work at height. It includes the occupational risk assessment, OSH instructions, training templates, examination referral templates and reports - the complete documentation required for work at height, ready to fill in with the realities of your site. For a smaller scope there's STANDARD (449 zł, 27 files) and STARTER (299 zł, 10 files), but you'll only find the IBWR for work at height in FULL.

The promotion runs until 7 July 2026 - i.e. just before the PIP reform. See BudoReady packages, put your documentation together once and have peace of mind before the inspector knocks.

This article is for information only and does not replace advice from an OSH specialist or an individual assessment of your legal position. The document templates require individual adaptation to the realities of your company and specific work stations, and it's worth verifying the current legal position as at the date of use.