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Harness & Lanyard Inspection Form Generator

Log the equipment by serial number, work through the removal-from-service conditions OSHA publishes for personal fall arrest systems, record what came out of service and sign the form, then print it or download it as a PDF. Every checkpoint carries the paragraph it comes from, and a blank form prints just as cleanly for filling out by hand at the gang box.

OSHA sets no calendar interval. Any periodic inspection frequency comes from the manufacturer and from the ANSI/ASSP Z359 code.
The pre-use inspection belongs to the person putting the equipment on.
Required for the inspection that follows impact loading — 1926.502(d)(19), 1926.32(f).
Equipment inspected

One line per unit. Serial number and date of manufacture are what make this record usable a year from now — and the only way to check the unit against the manufacturer's service life.

#Tag / IDTypeMake & modelSerial no.Date of mfr.Verdict
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Template for informational purposes only. This document must be reviewed and adapted by a competent or qualified person for your specific jobsite, equipment, and applicable federal, state, and local requirements. It does not constitute legal, engineering, or safety advice and does not by itself establish compliance with OSHA or any other standard. SteelToeTools assumes no liability for its use. Nothing you type is sent to our servers.

How to use this form

  1. 1
    Record the serial number, not the color. “The blue harness” is not a record. Serial number and date of manufacture are the only way to tell later which unit was inspected — and the only way to check it against the manufacturer’s service life.
  2. 2
    Answer group A before you touch anything else. Impact loading, a body belt in a fall arrest kit, an unreadable label, a field repair or an expired unit all end the inspection on the spot. There is nothing to weigh up.
  3. 3
    Work the webbing with your hands, not your eyes. Bend it into an inverted V a few inches at a time along its whole length, both sides of every strap, including under the back pad and the leg straps. Cuts, glazing and broken stitches show up in the fold long before they show up flat.
  4. 4
    Cycle every moving part. Gates, keepers, buckles, the retraction and lockup of an SRL. A hook that closes nine times out of ten is a defect, not a habit.
  5. 5
    Log what came out and where it went, then sign. Print or download the PDF. Put the fall hazard and the rescue plan into a JHA and the day’s crew into a pre-task plan, and document the PPE selection with the PPE hazard assessment.

What OSHA requires

One sentence carries the inspection duty in construction. 29 CFR 1926.502(d)(21): “Personal fall arrest systems shall be inspected prior to each use for wear, damage and other deterioration, and defective components shall be removed from service.” The general industry wording, 1910.140(c)(18), is slightly different and worth knowing: systems must be inspected before initial use during each workshift, and the list of what you are looking for opens with mildew.

Notice what is not there. OSHA gives no allowable cut length, no percentage of abraded webbing, no wear limit on a dee-ring — there are no dimensional reject criteria for a harness anywhere in the standard. What OSHA does publish is a list of conditions, in the non-mandatory guidelines at 1926 Subpart M Appendix C (g) and 1910 Subpart I Appendix C (g):

Any component with any significant defect, such as cuts, tears, abrasions, mold, or undue stretching; alterations or additions which might affect its efficiency; damage due to deterioration; contact with fire, acids, or other corrosives; distorted hooks or faulty hook springs; tongues unfitted to the shoulder of buckles; loose or damaged mountings; non-functioning parts; or wearing or internal deterioration in the ropes must be withdrawn from service immediately, and should be tagged or marked as unusable, or destroyed.29 CFR 1926 Subpart M App. C (g)

That list is what groups B to E of this form are built from. For the threshold on any given condition — how much abrasion is too much on this model of webbing — the manufacturer’s instructions govern, and the ANSI/ASSP Z359 code adds a further programme of periodic inspections by a competent person. Z359 is a paid consensus standard: it is named here and never reproduced.

The numbers OSHA does state for a personal fall arrest system
WhatFigureWhere
Dee-rings and snaphooks, minimum tensile strength5,000 lb (22.2 kN)1926.502(d)(3)
Dee-rings and snaphooks, proof test3,600 lb (16 kN) without cracking, breaking or permanent deformation1926.502(d)(4)
Lanyards and vertical lifelines, minimum breaking strength5,000 lb (22.2 kN)1926.502(d)(9)
Anchorage5,000 lb per employee attached, or a safety factor of at least two under a qualified person’s supervision1926.502(d)(15)
Maximum arresting force, body harness1,800 lb (8 kN)1926.502(d)(16)(ii)
Maximum free fall6 ft (1.8 m), and no contact with any lower level1926.502(d)(16)(iii)
Maximum deceleration distance3.5 ft (1.07 m)1926.502(d)(16)(iv)
Harness attachment pointCenter of the wearer’s back near shoulder level, or above the wearer’s head1926.502(d)(17)
Body belts for fall arrestNot acceptable since January 1, 19981926.502(d); 1910.140(d)(3)

OSHA prescribes no form and no retention period for the pre-use inspection, and sets no expiry date for a harness — service life comes from the manufacturer. The one inspection the standard hands to a named role is the one after a fall: 1926.502(d)(19) keeps impact-loaded equipment out of service until a competent person determines it is undamaged and suitable for reuse. Where the manufacturer’s instructions or ANSI/ASSP Z359 are stricter than OSHA, the stricter criteria govern the equipment you own.

Frequently asked questions

Before every use. 29 CFR 1926.502(d)(21) states that personal fall arrest systems shall be inspected prior to each use for wear, damage and other deterioration, and that defective components shall be removed from service. The general industry wording in 1910.140(c)(18) is slightly different and worth knowing: personal fall protection systems must be inspected before initial use during each workshift, and it adds mildew to the list of things you are looking for. Neither rule sets a calendar interval — the manufacturer's instructions and the ANSI/ASSP Z359 code do that, and where they are stricter than OSHA they govern the equipment you own.

No. Subpart M prescribes no form and no retention period for the pre-use inspection, and neither does 1910.140. What it requires is that the inspection happen, and that defective components be removed from service. A sheet like this one is how an employer shows both — and on a site where several people share a harness locker, a signed record with serial numbers is the only way anyone can tell which unit was checked.

OSHA publishes no measurements — no allowable cut length, no percentage of abraded webbing, no wear limit on a D-ring. What it does publish is a list of conditions, in the non-mandatory guidelines at 1926 Subpart M Appendix C (g): any component with a significant defect such as cuts, tears, abrasions, mold or undue stretching; alterations or additions which might affect its efficiency; damage due to deterioration; contact with fire, acids or other corrosives; distorted hooks or faulty hook springs; tongues unfitted to the shoulder of buckles; loose or damaged mountings; non-functioning parts; or wearing or internal deterioration in the ropes must be withdrawn from service immediately, and should be tagged or marked as unusable, or destroyed. That list is the backbone of this form. For the accept-or-reject threshold on any given condition, the manufacturer's instructions govern.

It stops being equipment and becomes evidence. 1926.502(d)(19) requires personal fall arrest systems and components subjected to impact loading to be immediately removed from service, and they shall not be used again for employee protection until inspected and determined by a competent person to be undamaged and suitable for reuse. 1910.140(c)(17) says the same for general industry. In practice most manufacturers do not allow reuse of a harness or an energy absorber that has taken a fall at all, and their instructions are the stricter rule that applies to your equipment. That is why it is the first question on this form.

No. 29 CFR 1926.502(d) is explicit: effective January 1, 1998, body belts are not acceptable as part of a personal fall arrest system. 1910.140(d)(3) repeats the prohibition for general industry. A body belt may still appear in a positioning device system, but it may not be what stops a fall — and a belt found in a fall arrest kit is a removal, not a discussion.

The pre-use inspection under 1926.502(d)(21) is done by the person about to put the equipment on, which is why 1926.503(a)(2)(ii) requires the employer to have each exposed employee trained, by a competent person, in the correct procedures for erecting, maintaining, disassembling and inspecting the fall protection systems to be used. The inspection that follows impact loading is different: 1926.502(d)(19) reserves it to a competent person, defined at 1926.32(f) as someone capable of identifying existing and predictable hazards and authorized to take prompt corrective measures. The ANSI/ASSP Z359 code adds a further programme of periodic inspections by a competent person; it is a paid standard, named here and not reproduced, and the frequency comes from it and from the manufacturer.

Not under any OSHA rule — there is no federal expiry date for a harness or a lanyard. Service life comes from the manufacturer's instructions, and it is usually stated as a maximum from the date of manufacture, sometimes shortened by the working environment. That is why the date of manufacture and the serial number belong on the record: without them, nobody can tell whether the unit in the locker is inside its own service life. Anything past it, or with an unreadable label, comes out of service.

1926.502(d)(5) requires snaphooks to be sized to be compatible with the member to which they are connected to prevent unintentional disengagement caused by depression of the snaphook keeper by the connected member — roll-out, in the field term — or else to be a locking type. 1926.502(d)(6) then lists the connections a non-locking snaphook may not be engaged in at all, which in practice is why every hook you will meet on a modern lanyard is self-closing and self-locking. Add 1926.502(d)(1)-(d)(2): connectors are drop forged, pressed or formed steel or an equivalent material, with a corrosion-resistant finish and all surfaces and edges smooth.

Partly, and you should know where the line is. The equipment log takes positioning lanyards and anchorage connectors, and the webbing, stitching, hardware and connector checkpoints apply to them the same way. What does not carry across is the system check in the last group: those criteria — the 5,000 lb anchorage of (d)(15), the 6 ft free fall and 3.5 ft deceleration of (d)(16), the 1,800 lb arresting force — are fall arrest criteria. Positioning device systems are governed by 1926.502(e), which sets its own anchorage and free fall numbers.

Sources & references

Content checked against these sources — last reviewed August 28, 2026.

By — Editorial team of SteelToeTools.com (published by LSEA SAS) Updated v1