Preventing slips, trips, and falls starts with the building itself
The fourth week of National Safety Month highlights one of the most critical issues confronting facility managers: preventing slips, trips, and falls. Along with training rigorously on safety best practices and conducting regular hazard assessments, working with our customers to build safety into the environment itself is a core part of UG2’s comprehensive approach to safety.
Design for safety from day one
Modern technological conveniences often foster human complacency regarding safety. While our reactive response to safety incidents is strong, we must improve our proactive risk mitigation and preparation strategies. Conversations around safety involve and impact everyone, at all levels, from building engineers to executives making decisions on layouts, lighting, materials, and more.
Here are five areas where our in-house experts often see opportunities for safety improvements.
Flooring selection
Materials like polished marble or high-gloss tile elevate the look of a space. But, beyond their actual price tag, they may come with a safety cost. These smooth surfaces can pose hazards when wet or even damp. Fortunately, innovations in flooring allow for balancing aesthetics with functionality, whether it’s opting for an anti-slip treatment or choosing a different material that mimics the look of slip-prone surfaces with added protection against falls.
Facility engineers know to consider the coefficient of friction (COF) when choosing flooring materials and cleaning agents, and use COF meters to assess the potential risk of slips and falls and take corrective action when needed.
Stairway design and maintenance
If we could predict an incident at a specific stairway, we would arrive a minute early with padding or inflatable mattresses to mitigate injuries. Unfortunately, we cannot predict the future. We can, however, prepare the environment to guard against injury.
Installation of non-slip treads, use of moisture-resistant materials, and the addition of handrails and guardrails present critical opportunities. Doubling up on handrails for wider stairwells and keeping them pristine makes them more user-friendly. And as with all things safety, checking and securing railings on a documented schedule is essential.
Walkway considerations
The exterior of the building is just as important as the interior when it comes to preventing slips, trips, and falls. Keeping the key connections between buildings clear is one of the best ways to make them safer.
Covered walkways keep surfaces drier in the rain and ice-free in the winter. They can also help mitigate the build-up of leaves and other organic debris that make surfaces slick. With less material and wetness getting on the shoes of people, less is tracked into buildings. This helps keep interior surfaces safer, too.
Lighting infrastructure
A single burned-out bulb can make navigating a dark stairwell or a hallway precarious. Motion-sensor lighting can help if the lighting triggers in time and in the right areas.
Teams can use predictive maintenance schedules to ensure lighting is updated before it’s defunct and can automate service requests to ensure rapid response when an issue is reported.
Rooftops
Some environments demand additional planning, especially for facilities that experience seasonal weather. For example, facilities that see snow and ice can invest in rooftop traction aids. Rubber membrane roofs can become extremely slippery, while non-metal spiked traction aids can help workers move around more freely.
The safest spaces are the ones where FM teams are constantly auditing their environments and considering safety when planning renovations. Treating hazard mitigation as a design challenge, coupled with ongoing training, can greatly increase the safety of your facility.
UG2 resources for assessing your current environment
You don’t have to wait to make building upgrades to have an impact on the safety of your facility. The UG2 safety team put together a downloadable checklist and e-book that you can use to reduce the risk of slips, trips, and falls in your workplace today. You can read more insights in Adam Rabesa’s Facility Management Journal article,To Minimize Slips & Falls, Expect the Unexpected.
Ultimately, safety is a collective responsibility. A lack of incident history does not guarantee a secure facility. True safety is measured by our preparedness for both expected and unexpected outcomes.