The Winter Season brings with it an increased number of risks to site safety for public areas and business premises. With this in mind, preparation is key before the weather turns to ice and snow.   So as the wintery weather fast approaches our team have come up with a few 'top tips' to minimise the risks of accidents on your site.

Tip 1 : Create a Plan
By creating a plan and mapping out your site it is much easier to identify areas of high footfall and areas of higher potential risk.  It also provides an opportunity to guage the level of work involved and monetary investment required to improve health and safety measures to cover the additional potential hazards.
Identifying key members of staff and allocating responsibilities is also a very useful method of spreading the workload and ensuring that staff are taking site safety seriously.   

A winter risk management plan should ananylse and evaluate the following :

• Staff training
• Staff awareness
• Communication methods
• Accident reporting
• Identification of high risk areas
• List of equipment and when it was last checked or serviced
• Potential equipment required

Tip 2 : Identify your equipment needs
Your risk management plan will have identified the areas which will need to be addressed.  By looking at the size of the area you will be able to determine whether a snow shovel will do or if you need a grit spreader.  Again, the size of the area will also identify if a manual push spreader will suffice or if a towable spreader would be more effective.  

Making sure you have the correct size of grit bin into hold enough grit salt is also a key consideration.  For larger areas, 350kg or 400 litre grit bins would suffice.  For domestic areas small 30 litre bins are perect but most customers would normally use several 200 litre grit bins placed around the site strategically to cover as much as possible.  

Tip 3 : Service and clean equipment regularly
Maintaining your winter safety equipment is key to maintaining the longevity of the equipment and maximising on the investment made.   This will reduce costs for repairs going forward and minimise the possibility of your equipment being out of action when it's needed most.   Where possible take service packages for larger equipment and test smaller pieces of equipment regularly to ensure their effectiveness. 

Remember:

• Take action early - don't wait for the ice and snow to hit
• Check the weather regularly in autumn and winter months and if possible subscribe for weather warnings
• Prioritise busier areas and take action before the ice hits on those areas which are deemed to be high risk
• Apply an adequate amount of salt and give it time to work before allowing pedestrians into those areas

Take a look at our winter safety equipment on our online store or give our team a call on 028 9035 0020.