After two months of careful research, BOMA International has responded to the International Window Cleaning Association’s (IWCA) draft window cleaning standard. “BOMA supports the spirit and intent of the document, which is to assure worker safety,” said BOMA President Richard D. Baier, managing director of CB Richard Ellis in Kansas City, Missouri. “BOMA also believes that there is room for improvement in this first draft effort.”
BOMA’s chief areas of concern with IWCA’s draft proposal include the:
- Unreasonable mandate requiring retrofitting of all existing buildings;
- Unfair omission of “window cleaner assurances;”
- Arbitrary establishment of a height limit for the use of descent-controlled equipment; and
- Unnecessary imposition of a written “plan” for cleaning windows.
BOMA’s concerns arise from the findings of the Window Cleaning Task Force BOMA formed to address the IWCA’s proposal. The task force based its findings on two significant shortcomings in the draft proposal:
- It was crafted without the benefit of any scientific data or analysis; and
- It does not adequately demonstrate need, fair imposition, reasonable achievement, and cost-efficiency, which are criteria that BOMA demands must be met by any ANSI Standard.
BOMA shares IWCA’s commitment to safe window cleaning. However, BOMA believes that the window cleaning contractors are the experts in window cleaning, and therefore should bear responsibility for carrying out most of the provisions of the document. BOMA requests that IWCA fill in the aforementioned research voids and amend the safety requirements, then circulate a second draft. Once the above concerns are addressed, BOMA will fully support a window cleaning standard.
For more information on the proposed IWCA Standard, please check out the BOMA window cleaning Web page at http://www.boma.org/winclean.htm.
