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Skills that raise your rate

• Suspended and swing stage scaffold

  Platforms hung from a roof on cables. A specialized, better-paid corner of the trade.

• Refinery and power plant work

  Higher pay, tighter safety rules, and shutdown seasons that pay for the rest of the year.

• Rigging and signal person training

  Moving loads with a crane. Short courses, and they travel to every construction trade.

• Competent person and scaffold inspector training

  The designation that makes you the person who signs off the tag on the scaffold.

• Estimating and scaffold design

  Calculating loads and pricing a package. This is how you stop climbing in your forties.