GB 4053.3-2009Safety requirements for fixed steel ladders and platforms - Part 3: Industrial guardrails and steel platforms (English PDF)

1 Scope

This part of GB 4053 specifies the basic safety requirements for the design, the manufacture and the installation of industrial guardrails and steel platforms.

It applies to the industrial guardrails and steel platforms used in the workplaces of industrial enterprises.

Guardrails

These are the requirements that get quoted in specifications and in accident reports alike: the height of the top rail, the intermediate rail and the gap it is permitted to leave, the toe board that stops a dropped tool being kicked off the edge onto whoever is below, and the spacing of the stanchions.

Above all, the horizontal load the assembly must resist without permanent deformation. A guardrail that is present but not strong enough is worse than none, because the person leaning on it believes it will hold.

Platforms

The platform requirements cover the loading of the deck and of its supports, the flooring with its slip resistance and its drainage, the openings and how they are protected, the clear headroom, the access to the platform, and the connection to the supporting structure.

To these are added the requirements common to the series: the materials, the protection against rust and corrosion and the lightning protection earthing following GB 50057, with the erection quality accepted in accordance with GB 50205 and the safety colours and signs following GB 2894.

About this edition

GB 4053.3-2009 is the current edition. It was issued on 31 March 2009 and has been in force since 1 December 2009, replacing GB 4053.3-1993.

GB 4053.3-1993 has been superseded: a specification that still cites it is citing a withdrawn edition.

The interval between issue and effect is the transition period. It exists so that producers, laboratories and buyers can requalify products, revise procedures and use up documentation before the new text becomes the one that applies. The date on this page is the official one from the record of the Standardization Administration.

Classification and status

GB 4053.3-2009 is classified under ICS 13.100. ICS is the International Classification for Standards, the same scheme used by ISO and by the national bodies of most countries, which is what allows a Chinese standard to be placed beside its foreign counterparts on subject rather than on number.

Its Chinese Standard Classification code is CCS C 68. CCS is the domestic scheme, a letter for the sector and two digits for the subject within it, and it is the code by which the standard is filed and searched in China.

The GB prefix marks a mandatory national standard. Compliance is required by law within China: it applies to what is made, sold or imported there, and an inspection body will judge a product against it whether or not a contract names it.

How a Chinese national standard is set out

Chinese national standards are drafted to the rules of GB/T 1.1, which fixes the order in which a standard is set out. The document opens with a foreword recording the issuing bodies, the relationship to any previous edition and the technical committee responsible for it. Clause 1 is the scope. Clause 2 lists the normative references — the other standards that have to be applied together with this one, and without which its requirements cannot be met. Clause 3 gives the terms and definitions. The technical clauses follow: the requirements themselves, the test or measurement methods by which conformity is established, the inspection rules that say how a lot is sampled and judged, and, for a product standard, the provisions on marking, packaging, transport and storage. Annexes, normative or informative, come last.

GB 4053.3-2009 runs to 15 pages in the English translation. What is delivered is the complete document in that order: every clause, every table, every figure and every annex of the Chinese original, with the same numbering, so that a reference to a clause number in a contract or a test report points to the same place in both languages.

About this English translation

The English edition of GB 4053.3-2009 is a full translation of the official Chinese text, not a summary, an abstract or a machine rendering left unchecked. Clause and subclause numbers, table and figure numbers and annex letters are those of the original, because they are what a specification, a purchase order or a test report cites.

Technical terms are translated against the vocabulary standards of the same field, so that a term used in GB 4053.3-2009 reads the same way as in the other Chinese standards it is used beside. Where a term has an established English form in an ISO or IEC document on the same subject, that form is used; where China's term has no foreign counterpart, it is translated literally and the Chinese is kept alongside it rather than replaced by an approximation.

Quantities, units and symbols are carried over unchanged. Chinese standards use SI, so a value in the translation is the value in the original document, not a conversion, and a limit read from the English text is the limit that will be applied by a Chinese inspection body reading the Chinese one.

This page is compiled from the official publication record: the standard number and both titles, the issuing bodies, the dates of issue and effect, the edition it replaces, the ICS and CCS classification. The requirements, limits, tables and test conditions are in the document itself.