I've recently started thinking about changing our company policy on FLT certificate refreshers from every 3 years to 5 years.

I personally believe that if someone completes a novice FLT course and then uses the truck almost every day then a refresher every 3 years is a waste of time and money.

Had anyone done the same as this previously, or if not what are your views on this?

Ditto above

SW

Below is an excerpt from the ACOP

"There is no specific time period after which you need to provide refresher training
or formal assessment. However, you may decide that automatic refresher training
or a retest after a set period of time (eg 3-5 years) is the best way to make sure
employees stay competent. Where you adopt this approach, you will still need to
monitor performance in case operators need extra training before the set period
ends. "

Its purely down to your subjective interpretation of their competence, habits and driving standards. If you start to notice that the racking is getting damaged regularly, forklifts and being left unsafe or accidents are starting to happen, then it may be a good time to refresh that training. On the other hand, if you have some very good drivers and everything is going nicely, then I'd leave it until the 5 years is up.

Hi
We have a lot of forklifts operating on our site, one of our main areas of concern is that we have to use a lot of agency FLT drivers because the nature of our business is that we have production peaks at various times of the year. We have an in-house forklift truck instructor, and any agency FLT operator as to go through a training program with him to make sure he is competent to drive a truck and to familiarise him with our site and procedures before we authorize him to operate in our warehouses.
We have forklift truck safety representatives and hold a forklift truck drivers safety meeting every month. If a FLT driver is involved in an incident or accident he is taken off truck driving duties until an incident report is submitted and the recommended actions have been completed.
We also do refresher training every 2 years, there is obviously no legal requirement to conduct refresher training every 2 years, but because we have an in-house trainer and can plan these sessions around production requirements we feel that this is something we can accommodate.
I think you have to take into account your own circumstances regarding FLT drivers, if you employ permanent FLT drivers with good safety records you may only require them to attend refresher courses every 3/5 years; but make sure if you go for the 5 year option the date on the refresher course certificate doesn't run out after 3 years.

Well they would wouldn't they ?
They run a business
But you are correct you need to check for this.

Our internal policy is every three years. We have this written into our procedures. Due to the nature and danger of FLT's we find it best practice to refresh this often.

External training providers will tend to issue certificates (not licences) with expiry dates as previously mentioned, it's in their benefit to do so!

Within my company, we probably employ 130+ instructors (myself being one of those!). Again as mentioned, this is highly cost effective and if you set standards and requirements of their training, along with an audit process, you can get consistent training throughout your company (not something you always get with external providers!).

Finally, I have one question, what is everyone's stance on allowing operators of FLT's of 17 yrs of age?

Thanks for your advice all.

I intend to consult the FLT workforce who recently completed refreshers after a period of 3 years, asking them what did they learn? Did they get anything new out of it? Was it a waste of your time?

And hopefully we get a good discussion going and are able to bring it to a conclusion and into effect beginning of next year after the review.

I think it's unfair to change the frequency of refreshers without first consulting the workforce and letting them have a say and valuing their opinions.

Again thanks for your advice.

PR - in respone to the 17yrs of age question, our RA for FLT,s MEWP,s is they are not use until the age of 18 and have completed a novice training course. The reason being that As HSE deem these as "young persons" they may be more susceptible to horseplay not saying every young person is but there is always that chance.