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Guru  
#1 Posted : 18 February 2019 10:16:44(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Guru

Hi all,  I was wondering how many organisations out there have a formal inspection regime for office chairs?  At my organisation we have thousands of chairs across all of our sites, we are on point with DSE assessments, DSE eLearning and some basic info cards for users, but dont have a formal inspection regime in place aside from user checks and reporting issues.

I know the seating at work guidance document talks about such a programme being best practice, but I've never worked anywhere which had done this.

Thanks.

A Kurdziel  
#2 Posted : 18 February 2019 10:42:48(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
A Kurdziel

 

This is a good point- chairs die often spectacularly: a practical application of some of that failure mode stuff you are supposed to learn of your diploma!  

The question is how to you manage this issue? You can arrange for each chair to be checked and have some sort of tag fixed to it but that would be seen as expensive ( until someone is seriously injured when a chair collapses under them) or you simply get rid of all chairs after a certain date ( 15 years?). I can remember that that at my last place of work we had new chairs issued, when we opened in about 1997 and we had a spate of collapsing chairs in about 2012-ish- about 20 out of about 500 on site.

  

nic168  
#3 Posted : 19 February 2019 16:58:17(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
nic168

 AK-  Not sure where you trained when I did my diploma about  half a day was spent on office ergonomics. Pretty certain I was the only person interested in the life expectancy of chairs.

Guru, you are right there should be some form of health check for them but I have never seen one. The best suggestion mmade to me was sneak a few questions on to the DSE form about condition of equipment, but this does not really work in a hot desking environment.

Most chairs will have a guarenteed life, I use that as a guide  for when they should be replaced. But if a chair has had a hard life and been subject to abuse then yes, they do collapse or worse and it can be quite starteling  to the occupant.

A Kurdziel  
#4 Posted : 20 February 2019 09:53:50(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
A Kurdziel

When I did my diploma it was in Latin!

Yes we spent an afternoon on office ergonomics but did nothing about applying ergonomics in the workplace generally as offices have the DSE regs to promote issues in the office but there is nothing similar for the general workplace.

Similarity we talked about failure modes but never applied it to offices or anything other than the engineering environment.  Looking back at it the whole point of the failure mode part of the course was to remind people that stuff wears out, gets old and eventually in one way or another, breaks and this applies to everything from braking systems on colliery lifts to office chairs.

Good bits in the course but not very well connected up.  I have had to do a fair of bit learning by myself to fill the gaps and to establish how it all connects up.

 

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