What Counts as Overside Work
The meaning of overside work and working over water, where the boundary lies, and what this awareness course does and does not give you.
8 min
Activities: 0 of 2
On an offshore installation, a drilling rig or a vessel, the deck edge is protected by perimeter handrails. Inside the handrails, a person who slips falls onto the deck. Outside them, a person who slips can fall into the sea.
Overside work, also called work over the side, is any work where a person is outside or above the perimeter handrails, or over open water, so that a fall could end in the sea. Working over water is the wider term. It includes the same risk on jetties, quaysides, barges and bridges.
The exact definition belongs to your installation or vessel. Read it in the local procedure. Most definitions use the same test: if this person fell, could they go into the water? If the answer is yes, the job is overside work, even when it takes only two minutes.
Work that people forget is overside work
Words used throughout the course
- Inboard: inside the perimeter handrails, on the safe side.
- Overside or outboard: outside the handrails or over the water.
- Standby person: a person who stays inboard, watches the overside workers and raises the alarm. Some sites say watchman or lookout.
- Standby vessel: a vessel that stays near an offshore installation to rescue people from the sea.
- Fast rescue craft (FRC): a small, fast boat launched to recover a person from the water.
A painter plans to stand on the middle handrail for two minutes to touch up a bracket on the outside of the deck edge. Is this overside work?