Recently, our team was brought into a discussion around a relatively straightforward insulation scope: a short section of pipe, already installed and painted, that needed to be re-insulated at elevation.

The existing execution plan involved multiple 70-foot scaffold builds across the entire pipe run. Weeks of setup. Significant manpower. Significant cost.

Our team proposed something different: rope access. By rigging a tension line across the rack, a small crew could access the full scope in a single shift without the footprint, congestion, or extended schedule required for traditional access methods.

What stood out wasn’t the reaction to the solution. The facility was already familiar with rope access through its inspection programs, but applying it to construction execution simply hadn’t been part of the conversation yet. Like many industrial sites, different groups had developed their own approaches over time, and this was an opportunity to connect those perspectives in a new way.

That disconnect is more common than most realize. And it's exactly why Performance Contractors recently built industrial rope access services into our direct-hire capabilities. Not as a separate division, but as a natural extension of the work we've always done.

Proven Discipline, Untapped Application

Rope access isn't new. SPRAT-certified technicians have been performing inspections, UT, and RT work at height across refineries, chemical plants, and offshore platforms for decades. What is new is applying those same techniques to the construction and maintenance scopes that have traditionally relied on scaffolding, cranes, and man lifts. This includes work like painting, insulation, fireproofing, welding, fitting, and even cable pulling.

A scaffold build can take three and a half weeks and a crew of 20 just to reach a work location. A three-person rope team can rig to the same spot in minutes with two bags of gear. When the scope is a short-duration task on a tall tower or a hard-to-reach section of pipe rack, rope access isn't just an alternative. It's the most efficient answer.

That doesn't mean scaffolding goes away. There will always be scopes that require full platform access, like long-duration jobs with heavy material movement, multi-trade coordination, or post-weld inspections by personnel who aren't rope-trained. The two methods complement each other. When rope access handles the quick, high-difficulty scopes, it frees up scaffold crews and materials for the jobs that truly need them and preserves the client's maintenance budget for bigger projects down the line.

Redundancy Over Recovery

Safety is where rope access separates itself, and where Performance's existing standards made this a natural fit.

Traditional work at height typically relies on 100% tie-off—a single point of fall arrest. If something goes wrong, the worker is suspended and waiting for a rescue team to respond, with the risk of suspension trauma increasing every minute. Industrial rope access operates on 200% tie-off. Every system has a backup. Every rope, every anchor, every connection is redundant. If one element fails, another catches it. Technicians work in a seated position using a work positioning harness statically loaded at all times. There is zero fall potential because they're already suspended.

Rescue follows the same principle. On a scaffold, an incapacitated worker may need a separate standby team with specialized equipment. On a rope access crew, every technician is rescue-trained—the crew is the rescue team. A rescue plan is built into every rigging setup before the job starts, and a supervisor can lower a teammate to the ground in seconds using the systems already in place. -- I've been told that the topic of "rescue" is a touchy subject internally, and we'd like to remove this paragraph.

That kind of built-in redundancy aligns with the way Performance already operates—where safety is part of the work, not a layer added on top of it. Rope access just makes that standard structural.

In-House Access, Always

Performance Contractors made the deliberate decision to build rope access as an in-house capability rather than subcontracting it, and the reason was simple: Our clients kept asking for it.

The program is being led by Matt Hebert, a SPRAT (Society of Professional Rope Access Technicians) Level 3 and IRATA (Industrial Rope Access Trade Association) Level 3 technician with nearly 20 years of rope access experience across industrial, offshore, and infrastructure environments. By training our own craft personnel through SPRAT certification, we maintain control over quality, safety standards, and crew readiness. Our procedures don't just mirror SPRAT's safe work practices, they supersede them. Where SPRAT guidelines say should, our documentation says shall. We close the gray areas.

The training itself happens at our dedicated facility in Prairieville, Louisiana, where personnel go through a week-long program combining classroom instruction with intensive hands-on practical application, culminating in an independent third-party evaluation. The certification is portable and industry-recognized so it's also an investment in each technician's career, not just a company credential.

Our approach is to take proven tradesmen—experienced painters, insulators, welders—and certify them for rope access. As Hebert puts it, "It's a lot easier to take a tradesman and make them a rope access person than to take a rope access person and try to make them a Class A welder."

That's a deliberate reflection of how Performance has always operated: invest in the people already embedded in the work, the ones who understand what's at stake inside these facilities, and give them another way to get the job done. The result is a crew that delivers the same quality of work Performance Contractors is known for, just accessed a different way.

The long-term vision is straightforward: rope-access-certified personnel already on site at every facility where Performance holds a presence. When a scope comes up, the crew is already there. A Level 3 supervisor mobilizes with the gear, pulls from a trained roster of craft personnel on that site, and the team is working.

Rethinking Access

Think of rope access as another tool in the toolbox or, more accurately, another kind of ladder–as Matt Hebert says. It doesn't replace the methods that have built this industry. It gives our clients a faster, safer, more cost-effective option for the scopes where traditional access methods aren't the most efficient answer. And we’re committed to building it more into our work.