Posted By Drew Shaw
Hi. Looking for some general views regarding LOLER, in particular it's effects on industrial doors.

Basically, at one of the sites where I work, we have loads of industrial doors, a fair number of which are the vertical folding shutter type which are lifted by wire ropes attached to motors. By virtue of the way the doors operate, someone within our organisation has deemed these type of doors to be lifting equipment.

My query is not so much whether these doors are or are not covered by LOLER (because we treat them as if they are) but as to what extent do we then need to look after them.

At the moment, we employ one of the country's leading door companies to maintain the doors (mostly annually) but on top of that, we also employ an independant specialist to do a "competent person" inspection.

From what I can gather, so long as we're maintaining the doors to a proper standard with a proper firm then there is no need for us to be spending the money (and it's loads !) getting an independant specialist to essentially look for the same stuff. I've checked some guidance on LOLER, Work Equipment and Workplace Health, Safety & Welfare but I can't find anything prescriptive that says we need to do BOTH.

Any guidance / opinions would be appreciated.

Drew

Posted By Paul Oliver
Drew,

Maintenance and Inspection are two completely different issues.

Have a look at your maintenance frequencies to see if the time frames between servicing are realistic.

your inspection regime will do just that (inspect / examine), and inform you if there are any defects or potential safety critical defects with any of the lifting mechanisms.

Don't know if I am teaching you to suck eggs here though!!!!

:-)

Paul

Posted By David A Cooper
Look at Reg 4 and Reg 5 of LOLER