What a Competent Person Looks For: 5 Signs Your Rooftop Anchors Need Inspection

If your crew works at height, your rooftop anchors are quite literally what stands between a normal workday and a catastrophic fall. And yet anchor inspections are one of the most overlooked items on a building’s maintenance checklist — often because they’re out of sight, out of mind, until someone clips into one.

That’s exactly the job of a Competent Person: someone trained to spot the warning signs before they become a hazard, not after. Here’s what they’re trained to look for.

1. It’s Been More Than a Year Since the Last Certification

OSHA and ANSI standards call for annual anchor inspections at minimum — more often in harsh climates or high-use environments. If you can’t remember the last time a Competent Person climbed up with a load cell and a checklist, that’s your first sign. A missed inspection cycle doesn’t mean the anchor has failed, but it does mean nobody can currently vouch that it’s safe.

2. Visible Rust, Corrosion, or Pitting

A little surface rust on hardware isn’t automatically a dealbreaker, but pitting, flaking, or rust that’s worked its way into the base plate or weld points is a different story. Corrosion weakens steel from the inside out, and by the time it’s visible, it’s often already compromised the anchor’s rated strength.

3. Cracks or Movement in the Mounting Surface

Anchors are only as strong as what they’re bolted into. Hairline cracks in the roof deck, parapet, or structural mount — or any wobble when you put weight on the anchor — are signs the connection point itself may be failing, even if the anchor hardware looks fine.

4. Missing or Illegible Tags

Every certified anchor should have a tag showing its rated capacity, inspection date, and inspector information. If the tag is missing, faded past reading, or was never installed in the first place, you have no documented proof the anchor is safe to use — which is a liability problem as much as a safety one.

5. Your Building’s Use Has Changed

New rooftop equipment, a change in the type of work being done up there, or a shift from occasional to regular maintenance access can all mean your existing anchors weren’t designed for the load or frequency they’re now seeing. An anchor rated for a single window cleaner isn’t necessarily rated for a multi-person suspended scaffold crew.

What to Do Next

If any of these sound familiar, it’s worth scheduling a professional anchor inspection sooner rather than later. A qualified Competent Person will load-test each anchor, check the mounting integrity, and issue updated documentation you can hand to your insurance carrier, your crews, or an OSHA inspector without a second thought.

At Expert Safety Services, we train Competent Persons to inspect, test, and certify rooftop anchors to OSHA and ANSI standards — so your building, your crews, and your paperwork are all covered. If it’s been a while since your last inspection, let’s fix that before it becomes a problem.

Have questions about your building’s fall protection anchors? Contact Expert Safety Services or give us a call at (309) 530-1215.