I'd like to meet (or talk with) with anyone who has used SAT (Slips Assessmnet Tool) or anyone who has used roughness for monitoring the slip irsk of floors. It is my view from roughness is a hopeless measure of slip risk for floors... because it does not match real slip measures, it does not detect contamination, and it does not detect change to slip risk. However, the HSE has been promoting roughness as a way of monitoring slip risks for nearly 7 years. It seems that all EHO's and mnay businesses and many local authorities have been sold on roughness, so I'd like to hear from anyone who has really used roughness for monitoring slip risk. Many thanks

I have used and do use the Surtronic Duo and SAT, albeit in a mostly reactive way (an unusual slip incident comes in, I go and measure, complete the SAT and, if it comes out Significant or High, I recommend some form of action). I'm fully aware of the limitations of this approach but would appreciate some comment on whether its useless, which appears to crop up quite a bit here. My understanding, and rationalisation of HSE endorsement, is that it's a decent rule of thumb; it'll tell you whether something's wrong and ripe for action/further investigation. I'd like my view to be the case as I just can't see a pendulum coming in whenever needed or in the form of a mass proactive assessment of all floorsurfaces but I could do with knowing if I've got it completely wrong.

Our biggest problem by far is water tracking in when it's wet outside. Admittedly not all our buildings have the modern requisite length of matting to absorb this, but I do honestly feel that the risk would be much diminished if everyone were to simply wipe their feet. Getting such a simple message across seems to be so much more difficult these days though?

Thanks, FloorT. But my understanding is that, if the expected contaminant is water, you can predict the floor's performance should it become contaminated. Is this correct?

It predicts nothing - it was originally designed for testing metal surfaces. The only uniformity you'll ever see is if you test it on plate glass of steel sheets. The stylus underneath moves up & down a minute piece of flooring, you can do 30 tests in a sq foot of floor & get 30 different results. Even worse on a gritty (aggregate) floor - you can pretty much decide your own results depending on what part you put it on. It's only use, in my view, is to monitor floor wear over a period of time, nothing more

No idea, but I do know I'd be laughed out of Court if I tried to argue anything on the results of a 'Kenny' !!

1) How can Rz micro roughness give a measure of wet slip risk when tests are taken on clean dry floors and the correlation with real slip measures (PTV-correlated measures) is close to zero? 2) How can Rz be a useful way of monitoring the slip risk of floors when it cannot detect contamination or any other cause of change to the slip risk of a floor? Did a job last week in a bakery - Kenny told me it was fine as it 'ignores' flour on the floor, Pendulum told me it was treacherous !! 3) If Rz microroughness is such a useful measure when taken alongside a real measure of slip risk (Pendulum)then why is there no guidance as to how the Rz measure should be used along with a PTV measure. HSE/HSL reports tend to ignore the Rz measure if it disagrees with the PTV measure. How is that useful? 4) I carry out post-slip forensic tests 3-4 times a week for a number of leading UK Personal Injury firms - just finished a factory in Scotland (RIDDOR incident) & slip on a South Coast pier tomorrow. I've stopped putting any kind of reading from the Surtronic Duo into reports as it's just seen as 'padding'. The range of readings are far to 'random' for a technical report and all the Court is interested in is PTV/SRV from the Pendulum