Hello all,
My name is Travis Shipman. I am the Quality Manager for Vertical Supply Group, the parent company of Notch Equipment and Sterling Rope. I arrived at Sterling 21 years ago with a rope, a rack, and the shirt on my back, and I now have multiple decades of experience as a quality professional within the fall protection and life safety field. Within our ISO9001 certified Sterling rope factory in Biddeford, Maine, I lead a team of 3 expert technicians, and as a team, we oversee quality, inspections, certifications, and testing for all VSG brands and products.
I am writing to add context regarding the recent notice for the Rope Runner Pro and help with some circulating misinformation. I can't guarantee I'll be able to reply to questions daily, but I will check in periodically to see if I can add value to the discourse on this forum.
In June, what was stated as a Rope Runner Pro spring failure was brought to our attention by a west coast arborist who returned three devices with an internal spring malfunction. We promptly started investigating the cause of the malfunction upon being alerted to it. To date, we have identified a total of six devices with this problem out of nearly 10,000 in the field. This prompted Notch to issue the
Notice to Inspect to alert the arboriculture community and remind everyone to regularly inspect their gear.
We performed and continue to perform extensive lab testing both in development and with production units on Rope Runner Pros and all other Notch Equipment products. We recently performed cycle testing on the RRP's to 250,000 repetitions on the bird and could not recreate the failure from the recent claims. We cycle tested on the extreme ends of our tolerance range, with springs under-sized and outside the specification, and all passed.
As some are aware, the development of the Rope Runner Pro was an extensive process that we knew we had to get right. We went through many prototype iterations and worked in the field with dozens of arborists who brutally put the products through their paces over nearly 5-years before arriving at the product you see today.
Last summer, the Rope Runner Pro crossed a significant hurdle and received CE approval from an independent testing operation in Europe. Newer batch #'s of the device, certified to an internally written specification based on the EN 12841 PPE standard, will be available soon. Although they bear the CE mark, these units are no different from the current models.
We continue to work on this issue and will continue to investigate it, so please, if you have a device that you believe has an issue, contact Notch customer service, and we will take care of you. It is also worth noting that the RRP's that we've gotten back function correctly/normally after cleaning. This is a precision piece of equipment that must be maintained. As we say in the instructions, please continuously check that your bird pivots smoothly and clean it regularly!
I want to reiterate the scope of use of the Rope Runner Pro in this post, as there seems to be some confusion around this. The device is used as an ascent, descent, or work positioning device. It's not intended to catch dynamic falls. As with all work positioning devices, avoiding slack in the system while working is essential. If there is any chance of a fall, use a backup approved as a fall arrest device. It's worth referencing the
User Instructions periodically to remind yourself of proper Rope Runner Pro techniques.
As I mentioned at the top, my role at VSG is quality leadership, not communications. Fire away with your questions, but please be patient with my response time. I'll engage as frequently and deeply as I possibly can.
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