Good afternoon everyone,

We have just upgraded much our warehouse racking to make it double-deep and plan to go live next month.

occsionally we need to rescue a "tipped" pallet at height. We  have a good system for doing this in traditional racking but have no experience of doing this in double-deep racking where the pallet may be inaccessible from a working platform.

I presume we would have to train our guys to climb the racking weraing a harness or pay a specialist to do it for us.

I would be really grateful for any advice on the best soltion.

Thank you.

Thanks - I can' see anything in their documentation and when I asked them - they ould only tell me that other clients had had to resort to climbing the racking with slings and harnesses.

I wil refer back to them and also ask our racking inspectors if the racking requires access platforms or similar to meet SEMA standards.

I also admit that I know very little about racking, and don’t understand what is actually meant by “tipped” pallet? Has the pallet collapsed on one side so you can’t get the forks under, or has the items fallen off the side of the pallet? Or has the pallet been pushed in too far and fallen off the back edge a bit?

Originally Posted by: David Manson

Thanks - I can' see anything in their documentation and when I asked them - they ould only tell me that other clients had had to resort to climbing the racking with slings and harnesses.

So, have the manufacturers of the racking put suitable anchor points in for harnesses to be attached? and that may need to take shock loading? Perhaps your building has them built into it? However, I doubt it.

A kurdziel has a point.

Chris

Hi David

SEMA have a free Code of Practice for the Use of Static Pallet Racking.

It's not a free immediate download, but SEMA emailed it to me today within hours of me filling in an online form so that I could get up to speed on a subject that hasn't really been on my day to day agenda for many years and I can do some CPD (without going on a course)!!

It's very blunt at 6.9:

"Personnel are not permitted to climb on racking structures."

I guess that the SEMA guidance for those doing detailed inspections is a little less strict (as people will necessarily have to get inside the structure to inspect connections etc from touching distance), but in general the application of the "general principles of protection" (as set out in Schedule 1 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999) would indicate that reliance on harnesses for fall protection is inadvisable for all but very rare access.

Hi David, in the warehose i previously worked in, we installed pallet racking shelves into the back sections of the double deep racking to prevent this happening. Obviously an additional cost but prevented any dropped rear pallets.