Posted By Gordon Thelwell Inspired by this fantastic forum, I have recently constructed a warehouse safety forum to cater the materials handling industry or anyone having Pallet Racks in their workplace. It is aimed at being a focus point for people to find, share and discuss safety issues for a subject that is at best fragmented. It requires Safety Professionals to highlight the lack of specific regulations, ACOP's and Guidelines applying to Pallet Racking Safety and Warehouse Safety in general. The SEMA Guidelines as they stand are a rudimentary homage to an ageing British Standard BS 5950 Part IV which is borrowed from basic steel structures e.g. a 300mm x 300mm steel box column used for static building support. As some of you may know, Racking is a Dynamic Storage System with C section open back column sections not exceeding 100mm on the front face. The SEMA Guidelines do not take into account the depth, height, grade or gauge of steel, the working environment, Material Handling Equipment used, the loads being stored or the actual systems of work in operation thus negating the spirit of a 'real world' assessment. The results that I see during my time at work are damage tolerance levels to racking that are either ignored because they are regarded as financially prohibitive, or where the client is spending immense amounts of their repair budgets unnecessarily. Please can you help me change the law in this respect? I shall refrain from posting the Safety Forums address until permission or otherwise is granted by the IOSH Forum moderator. Nevertheless, if you have any views or comments on this subject I would enjoy your opinion or advice.

Posted By Gordon Thelwell Hi Martin, Yes, that is correct, the splice plate section should not be below the first beam level because of the impact collapse propensity of a low splice section. Here is the shortcut to the forum, it's still less than a week old but growing everyday. Please download the documents and feel free to add any you wish. http://www.therackgroup.com/forum/toast.asp Thankyou for the encouragement, please join in! Regards, Gordon.