Posted By Roy Male
Hello All



My company has moved its warehouse operation into a new and larger building. They have also purchased 5.25 metre high pallet racking which covers about 40% of the floor area on which we will be storing metal products. I carried out the risk assessment of picking in the rack area and one of the hazards I identified was the falling from height of one of our products and striking a person below. Therefore one of the risk controls was that all operators should wear a hard hat. However when I returned from holiday I was told by our new Operations Manager that he has instructed all the operators that they do not need to wear hard hats because it was not a legislative requirement. When I advised him of the hazard his only comment was for me to prove to him the requirement of wearing hard hats.



This decision I gathered was influenced by our new QA Manager who has come from the automotive industry and he stated that they did not wear hard hats in the narrow aisle racking in his previous company.



It should also be noted that seeking some specific information in the HSE Publication ‘Health and Safety in Retail and Wholesale Warehouses’ there is an image of a fork lift truck driver in the putting a pallet away in pallet racking not wearing a hard hat.



I would be grateful to receive your advice on the above situation.


Many thanks

Roy

Posted By Brett Day

Hang on isn't PPE the last resort ? Why would loads fall off racking and why are they not secured to prevent this ? (or at least items that may fall of such as round or cylindrical items placed on ground or lower levels so that there is less distance to fall and subsequently less damage, both to persons and stock).

Posted By Robert S Woods
First thing you’ve got to look at is a loading system for the racking as mentioned in previous replies. Shrink-wrapping multiple items such as small boxes or cans will mitigate the chances of them falling.

There is also the workplace transport risk assessment to carry out (traffic related accidents are a priority enforcement issue for the HSE).

I visited literally hundreds of warehouses in the job I had previous to working in H+S and hard hats and safety footwear were a requirement before entering the vast majority of them.

I had dealings with a chap who worked for a large supermarket chain in a warehouse. A pallet came down from the third tier of some racking and struck his head. The hard hat almost certainly prevented serious head injuries but he was still left with damage to his neck muscles and a broken collarbone.

Posted By Sean Cusack
As far as I can tell from the above, the hazard is metal items falling from the racking. How big are these items, and how often do they fall? What tasks are the people doing at the time when any potential metal item is likely to fall on them? Are the items just as likely to fall from the top level as from half-way up?

Will wearing helmets cause more inconvenience and hardship to the wearer (prompting them to remove their helmet when no-one is looking)? Have the workers been involved in the risk assessment process? You say you carried out the risk assessment, but did you involve other people as well, not just to get a broader assessment of the risks but also to allow for ownership at grass roots level?

From the information given it is impossible to tell whether or not providing helmets is the appropriate course of action. It may well be, but why have they never been specified in the past? It may be a new and larger building, but have the standard work practices remained the same?

As to the HSG76 operator not wearing a helmet, you will see that his reach truck has an overhead guard to protect him, and he is lifting large boxes which would kill him regardless of helmet.

Sorry this is more a series of questions than a specific answer, but it is impossible to make a definitive judgement without understanding the problem better.

Regards. Sean