The profession

The evolution of “Work involving difficult access” activities has continually increased in growth since its creation more than forty years ago, with optimistic perpectives for the years to come. On a national scale, the SFETH (the French Union of Height Workers) counted 376 companies in the building and civil engineering fields whose main activity is Work at Height (among which 65 are individual companies or tradesmen).

Which represents an annuel turnover of about 500 000 000 €.

The working population of Rope Technicians in France is estimated at about 2800 salaried employees and 3000 temporary employees.

To be added to these figures are the companies and the employees for whom Work at Height is an occasional or secondary activity, as well as the cleaning and events companies for which there is no current data.

The goal of the union is to reunite companies that belong to the local and regional unions in construction and civil engineering that have as a main or secondary activity “work involving difficult access”. The union insures the congruence of its members, it represents them before public institutions and supervises the material and moral interests of its members and the profession. Its goal is essentially technical and promotional. “Work involving difficult access” entails complexities that require perfect knowledge of the working conditions, the regulations and safety. These operations require the skill and experience of a highly qualified workforce. Thus it is imperative that these practices be applied by the book  and acknowleged by all of the different actors in the industry.

The main goals of the Union are:
To draw up technical guidelines and define the good practices in involving “difficult access work”.
To participate in the standardization of documents, both French and European, for the documents relative to the execution of work involving difficult access and the material employed for its execution.
To study and define responsibility.
To be in charge of the professional training and the qualification of the employees to perform highly technical work.
To create and develop the code of quality and security.

Since the sudden death of Jean-Marie DUBOIS, the Scuba Divers and Workers at Height Union has no official spokesperson.