What You Should Know About Pallet Racking Safety Guidelines

For any business, it’s common sense to ensure your equipment works correctly, built to product regulations and safe to use. Most of us know where to look for advice and the marks associated with meeting UK standards. However, one area that still seems to cause a lot of confusion are pallet racking safety guidelines. Yet getting it right is critical especially when you consider that in most warehouse situations the structure sits in close proximity to your employees. Ensuring it’s in tip top condition and meeting pallet racking safety guidelines is crucial.

In our blog, we walk you through the different life stages of your racking and explain how guidance from the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) and industry regulations impact how you look after it and the decisions you make when purchasing racking.

Warehouse Safety Standards

We’re going to start our blog by looking at the end point – how to look after your racking. We’re covering this area first because it is the one most regulations and industry guidance reference.

When it comes to running your storage facility safely there are numerous documents from the HSE. These advise on safety measures that keep everyone in your the workplace safe.

The following list doesn’t cover everything, but the main guidance you should be aware of is as follows:

• Health and Safety at Work Act is the primary safety legislation with covers occupational health and safety in Great Britain. It sets out the general duties employers have towards their employees and members of the public. You must also ensure that you maintain workplaces, equipment and systems appropriately and provide information and instruction on safe use, testing or examination to ensure compliance.
• The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations reinforce the Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974, by outlining that employers identify the risks faced by their employees, contractors and members of the public and take steps to control any danger as well as provide necessary training for employees.
• Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations aim to ensure that workplaces meet the health, safety and welfare needs of employees. They apply to most workplaces but exclude construction work on sites, those in or on a ship or those below ground at a mine!
• The Manual Handling Operations Regulations provides guidance on how to avoid, assess and reduce the risk of injury from manual handling.
• Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations often abbreviate to LOLER place duties on people and companies who own, operate or have control over lifting equipment.
• Work at Height Regulations expects employers to prevent the risk of death or injury caused by a fall from height. Due to the height reached with racking equipment, the design may need to incorporate safeguards for arresting falls and guard rails.

Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations often abbreviated to PUWER, place duties on people and companies who own, operate or have control over work equipment. It requires owners to ensure that the equipment provided is suitable for the intended use, safe to use, maintained correctly and inspected regularly.

There are two additional pieces of guidance information which are of direct relevance to the warehouse. This includes HSG76 Warehousing and Storage: A Guide to Health and Safety and SEMA Codes. It is not a legal requirement to follow these guidance documents. However, if you fail to meet your legislative requirements and HSE were to take enforcement action they can use the HSG76 and SEMA Design Codes frameworks to bring action against your business. We’ll discuss these in more detail later on.

Pallet Racking Safety Guidelines – Regular Inspections

Most of the regulations above place a heavy emphasis on ensuring you maintain your equipment it and works correctly. Your racking is performing the crucial job of keeping tonnes of equipment safely above the heads of your employees. If you have a look at HSG76 it confirms that racking is manufactured from relatively lightweight materials. This fact does limit the amount of abuse it can withstand and any damage will reduce its load carrying capacity. The greater the damage the less strength the structure will have.

For this reason, it is incredibly important to implement regular inspections. The first stage is to ensure your employees have the skills to identify damage on the racking. They should then be aware of how to report it immediately to the person responsible for inspections. You should also nominate a member of your team to perform visual inspections and maintain a formal written record. At Teepee we offer training to prepare your team for working around racking.

At least once a year, you must support the regular in-house pallet racking inspections with an expert inspection. This inspection must be undertaken by a qualified rack inspector who has the correct qualifications. Their role is to conduct racking and storage assessment reports on the racking and advise if it requires repair work.

If you need an expert inspection, book an appointment with one of our Teepee inspectors. Their report will detail specifications, conditions, damage list by location and photographic evidence for remedial works by your approved supplier.

Racking Installation

Be aware that HSG76 states it’s not sufficient to assume contractors carrying out racking maintenance are competent and work safely. You must check and establish their credentials prior to them starting the work. Ensure they have suitable insurance cover, and provide method and risk assessments prior to commencement of work on site.

With very few racking installation qualifications on the market, this can be a difficult area to check. That is why the Storage Equipment Manufacturer’s Association (SEMA) set up their SEIRS training programme for installers of pallet racking. SEMA is a leading voice on safety within the storage equipment industry and if you look at the racking sections in HSG76, you will notice their work is referenced throughout. As one of the SEMA Approved Members, we must commit to using with SEIRS registered installers for our racking installations.

SEIRS is a two-stage training programme which instructs on the correct and safe industry practices for installing racking. Some racking projects are built on construction sites, and it may be a requirement of the project manager for installers to hold a CSCS card. Be aware that CSCS class certain activities such as racking installations as a specialised skill. In these cases you can only access the correct card through one of their partner card schemes. A CSCS card for racking installations is only available through SEIRS.

Pallet Racking Safety Guidelines – Racking Design

At the start of your racking’s journey, it must meet set criterion to ensure the structure is suitable for the job. In other words, it must work for your space, picking methods and stock weight and type.

This is where design codes help. They ensure ensuring suppliers can demonstrate the systems they supply conform to quality standards and health and safety requirements. We meet these conditions by using codes when designing racking. In the UK, we must ensure it conforms to either EN 15512 or SEMA Design Codes which seen as the standards of the industry.

Trust in Teepee

As a SEMA Approved Member we are regularly kept up to date on the latest industry requirements for the design and installation of racking systems. This way, you know we have created a safe working environment for your employees. To gain our membership we must demonstrate that we work to over 40 regulations, industry standards, Codes of Practice and legislative requirements.

The membership is awarded after we meet the conditions of an independent audit which checks our work across five key areas. These include:

• SEMA standard compliance
• Making sure we maintain proper legal and insurance documentation
• Conformance to Health and Safety requirements
• Commitment to reduce environmental impacts
• Work towards the highest quality standards

We have also been awarded SEMA’s top membership level for racking suppliers. By achieving the SEMA Approved Member – Advanced status which demonstrates our commitment to meeting a high SEMA criteria level.

Are you looking to improve your storage solutions? At Teepee, we have created storage systems for major manufacturers and retailers across the UK. With over 40 years experience within the industry, we can help you maximise the performance of your warehouse. We work closely with customers to design bespoke warehouse pallet racking systems that get to the heart of their business. Our systems help them to maximise their storage and boost productivity.

If you have any questions, get in touch with one of our team who are on hand to help you out.