Hole cover
Also called Floor hole cover, Opening cover, Service hole cover, Penetration cover
A hole cover is a temporary cover fixed over an opening in a floor or deck — a service penetration, a duct, a core hole — so that nobody can step or fall into it and nothing can drop through it onto the level below. It is a collective protection measure: it protects everyone working on that floor without anyone having to be attached to anything, which is the class of measure the Work at Height Regulations 2005 require an employer to prefer.
From our specifications
Our own covers come in two sizes, and the sizes are the specification. The large cover is 350 mm × 350 mm, covers holes up to 300 mm in diameter and is screwed down at each corner. The small cover is 250 mm × 250 mm, covers holes up to 200 mm in diameter and is fitted by squeezing its inbuilt legs together so that they spring out beneath the slab and hold it — no tools, no fixings and nothing left in the concrete. Both are moulded from recycled polypropylene, brightly coloured, non-slip and thin enough not to become a trip hazard in their own right, and both are reusable rather than consumed by the job. Both have been independently load tested: the analysis on the large cover shows 180 kg applied through a single heel print of 90 mm × 80 mm over a 300 mm hole with screw fixings at each corner, and the analysis on the small cover shows 150 kg through the same heel print over a 200 mm hole.
Source: Brilliant Ideas Hole Cover published product data, datasheet and independent load test analysis
Where it matters on site
The legal position is worth stating in UK terms, because most of what is written about hole covers online is written to American rules and quotes an American regulator. Under the Work at Height Regulations 2005 work at height means work in any place, including a place at or below ground level, where a person could fall a distance liable to cause personal injury if measures were not taken — so there is no minimum height and no minimum hole size in the definition, and a service hole in a ground floor slab qualifies. Schedule 1 of the Work at Height Regulations 2005 then requires every existing place of work at height to possess a surface which has no gap through which a person could fall, through which any material or object could fall and injure a person, or giving rise to other risk of injury to any person, unless measures have been taken to protect persons against such risk. A fixed cover is one of those measures, and because it protects everyone on the floor rather than one attached individual it is a collective measure, which regulation 7 ranks ahead of personal protection. The practical failure is the improvised version: a sheet of ply or a pallet laid over a hole is unfixed, unmarked, thick enough to trip on and slippery once it weathers — and the moment somebody lifts it to run a service through, nothing puts it back.