Bernard Tallobre (left) and Stephane Schmidt receive the Innovation Preventica Award at the Health & Safety Awards in France for the new Span 500 AdvanceGuard system.

SGB Harsco, the French distributor for Instant UpRight recently won the Innovation Preventica Award at the Health & Safety Awards in France. The company received the award for the Span 500 AdvanceGuard system, which it markets under the Sprint name by SGB Harsco.

The Span 500 AdvanceGuard system is the result of a combined one-year development project by Instant UpRight, the manufacturer, and SGB Harsco, the distributor. The two companies worked with the French safety authorities to bring a safer mobile tower to the French market.

The new Sprint Span 500 AdvanceGuard is a one-piece guard rail that is integral to the tower build thereby forcing the tower user/erector to fit the guardrail as he or she builds. The one-piece guard rail replaces loose braces, reducing the number of components required to build a safe mobile tower thereby improving both safety and speed of erection.

Because the guardrail is integral to the build, bracing patterns cannot be altered, meaning the tower is built correctly each time. In addition, fewer components result in fewer losses from the jobsite.

Instant UpRight will debut the next phase of its AdvanceGuard product range showing Span 300 and 400 versions, which are commonly used throughout its distributor network in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, this week at Bauma in Munich, Germany.

SGB is in the process of joining forces with its sister companies, Patent in the United States and Hünnebeck in Europe, operating under the new banner of Harsco Infrastructure, which offers a single, integrated, international source for rental scaffolding, shoring, concrete forming and a range of advanced access solutions for major non-residential construction and industrial plant maintenance projects.