- Physical Fitness: Due to how physically demanding the work is, rope access leaves technicians little option other than to be physically fit. In most cases, just performing the work itself goes a long way in helping to cultivate a higher level of physical fitness. Being a rope access technician is not dissimilar to working out for forty hours a week; the exercise is built into the job.
- Unbeatable Views: One of the awesome benefits of being hired to access an area no one else can get to is that you get to see what no one else gets to see. There are views technicians see that only a handful of people in the world have or will see, places they will access that they would never be able to access if they weren’t performing rope access. The underside of the Skywalk at the Grand Canyon, government buildings with top level security, rooftops on New York City skyscrapers, the space shuttle Atlantis: without rope access, we wouldn’t have seen any of them.
- Patience & Focus: Two traits that can easily make or break technicians, and those technicians also take home with them and see the benefits of in their personal lives. Patience and focus are paramount when performing rope access; ascending 200 feet, performing an edge start on a 50 story building, tying knots necessitate a serious level of patience and focus because it could be the difference between life and death. Learning to have both of these qualities while on line brings with it the benefit of these qualities in the technician’s daily life, lending to an often times calmer, thorough and more focused thought process.
- Coordination: We could have included this with number three, but it’s significant enough to warrant its own spot. There is a very real necessity for coordination in rope access; to put it simply, you can’t accomplish anything on ropes if you resemble a fish out of water. Technicians need to be coordinated enough to perform, hold and maintain multiple physical tasks simultaneously which is an incredibly useful trait to have carry over into one’s personal life.
- Career Path: Rope access holds the potential for countless career paths. There are countless windows of opportunity, whether a technician is interested in being an instructor, evaluator, supervisor, project manager, operations manager or even the director of a safety division, all are possibilities that are open to technicians in the rope access community. Many enter into rope access in the early stages of their career development, and with dedication and proper planning they can take their career within the industry in nearly any direction, up to and including retirement. Rope access appears on the surface to be a limited potential occupation for young climbers, when in reality it is the perfect way to begin laying the foundations of an enduring and self-sustaining career.
