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Posted By Anthony Edwards
Should Fork Lift Truck refresher training take place every 3 or 5 years. At present it is conducted every 3 and I have been asked if this is necessary as the company could utilise the funding else where(believe it or not on other health and safety training)!
Thanks for the replies in advance
Tony
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Posted By Debbie S
In our company we do refresher training every 3 years for frequent users and up to 5 for non frequent users based on the fact that the more frequent users will / can pick up bad habits.
We had a FLT user become a qualified 'in-house instructor' as the course was only about £1,000 and his RTITB training certificate is valid for a five year period, making it a more cost effective way of keeping up with the training required.
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Posted By cvjm
in my last two companies we have always refreshed every three years
i think in the event of an incident (FLT/pedestrian) could you justify not retraining at a cost of c£150 for three operators - obviously I dont know how many people you need to refresh!
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Posted By Martin Taylor
Debbie - why do refresher training less often for the irregular drivers - surely they are the ones who need refresher training more often.
Cvjm - what is the purpose of routine refresher training following an accident. It may be an appropriate action in some cases but the accident investigation should identify the root causes(s) before determining appropriate actions to prevent recurrence.
On more general terms 'what is the point of refresher training' - in my opinion it is an easy option to meet requirements but does it really establish continuing competance to operate equipment.
To me there are two elements of a refresher process:-
1)training on the correct operation of a vehicle, loading racking, unloading vehicles etc etc
2)behavioural training to drive the vehicle safely
If you are an occasional driver then point 1 may have some value but on a regular basis - if you do the job every day - what is the point of 1) - anybody fancy sitting your driving test every 3 years
on the other hand point 2 - addressing those bad habits and unsafe behaviours (coupled with 1:1 observation of operations) to me addresses a much greater range of problems
Martin
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Posted By cvjm
sorry - i did not mean retrain as an action post an accident per se - I simply meant that it would be difficult to defend that training had only be refreshed every 5 years when it is so cheap
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Posted By Steve Cartwright
Basically it is a bum covering exercise.
Stick to the guidelines i.e.
Every 3 years for infrequent use and up to 5 years for regular users.
Also insure you include familiarisation training i.e. speed limits, any locations where FLT's are not permitted.
Its called good practise. You could always get a copy of HSG136 Workplace transport Safety. £11.50.
All the information you require will be in it.
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Posted By Ian_P
I know you're all gonna hate me but: there is absolutely no guidance, or legislative need, for refresher training.
As the HSE put it:
"There is no set frequency for refresher training in legislation, neither is there any logical basis for saying that refresher training should be provided at set intervals. L117 advises that employers should continuously monitor the performance of operators to ascertain whether they might need refresher training (indicators might be near misses, accidents or simply consistently unsafe working practices). Although employers are free to set refresher training intervals, they should not then ignore operators for the intervening period (L117 para 47)"
What the HSE are saying is that you should have documented, scheduled, monitoring of your FLT drivers. If you just do refresher training every 5 years you are not assessing the risk - or paying any attention to safe / unsafe practices in the meanwhile.
Having previously worked in a busy distribution centre (over 100 trained FLT operatives) it is not practical or financially feasible to conduct refresher training at set intervals - especially when it can take 1 or 2 days!
What we did is send one supervisor on an official training course and conducted scheduled and random assessments of our drivers. Those that failed these assessments, and those involved in accidents / unsafe practices (a yellow & red card system was used), were then given refresher training.
If you compare it to fleet company car drivers you are not required to retake your driving license every 3, 4 or 5 years even though you are operating far more potentially fatal equipment. Likewise, this risk is also controlled by assessing & monitoring drivers through road risk programmes.
Ian
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Posted By CRT
Ian.
great answer - in a nutshell - sensible risk management.
CRT
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