Korea Scaffolding Institute opens Gimhae headquarters and launches high-altitude work safety platform

The Korea Scaffolding Institute has begun operating a new southern regional base in Gimhae, designed to bring high-altitude work training, structural testing and field support under one roof.

The Gimhae headquarters, located in Daedong Industrial Complex in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang Province, includes hands-on training facilities and a dedicated center for certifying the performance of large structures. It is the institute’s second regional base after its headquarters in Anseong, Gyeonggi Province.

The institute cited Ministry of Employment and Labor figures showing that falls accounted for 280 of South Korea’s 872 fatal industrial accidents last year, or 32.1%. To address the risk, it expanded its former Busan branch in Gimhae and broadened training beyond scaffolding and cranes to include roofs, steel structures, safety ropes and construction machinery.

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The Gimhae headquarters will serve as a base to ease problems such as labor shortages and inadequate practical infrastructure at worksites.

The new practical training facility has a 12-meter ceiling to replicate conditions at actual high-altitude worksites. Managers will receive training in site safety management, while workers will practice correct procedures intended to reduce accidents linked to limited experience. The center also has a mock-up testing facility and performance-certification equipment for full-scale temporary structures, allowing the institute to verify the real loads and movement of large assembled structures rather than relying only on theoretical structural reviews.

The institute plans to gradually link training with a skills grading system, a safety accountability system and artificial intelligence-based safety verification. It said the approach will support safety management at construction, plant, power-generation and shipyard sites. Institute director Hong Gi-cheol said the Gimhae base would help ease shortages of skilled personnel and practical infrastructure while improving the safety of workers and structures.

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We will contribute to preventing industrial-site accidents by improving the safety of workers and structures in multiple ways.