As 2024 approaches, budgets are top of mind for safety managers and their employers, and worker safety should be among the top budgetary concerns they consider. Without taking proper fall safety precautions, worksites can open employees up to countless potential hazards, which in turn can lead to labor shortages, workers’ compensation costs, damaged equipment and more. To keep workers safe in the new year, as well as permanently improve your organization’s revenue, we’ll cover the most essential mezzanine safety protocols.
The Expense of Mistakes
At the heart of fall protection is a responsibility to protect workers from injuries according to the highest industry and regulatory standards. It’s all the better to surpass those standards, especially when there’s a compelling ROI.
This may seem counter-intuitive, but preventative action not only improves worker safety, but also operational efficiency and revenue. As we’ll explore, mezzanine and platform gates are a clear example of when greater industrial safety translates to higher efficiency and profits.
Fall Hazards: The True Costs
Any loss in workplace function will create an insecure workplace and stunt revenue. To these ends, leading equipment manufacturers have developed affordable safety devices that essentially double as warehouse efficiency tools.
The benefits of safer mezzanine and other warehouse conditions come immediately, including a drastic reduction in expenses associated with:
- Lost worker income
- Sudden labor shortages, often for specialized tasks
- Workers’ compensation payouts
- Damaged equipment or materials, plus the cost of repair or replacement
- Fees for noncompliance
- Increased insurance costs, including higher premiums after every incident
- Possible legal expenses
How Greater Mezzanine Safety Improves Efficiency
The good news is that the best industrial safety solutions are just as black and white as the concerns. A mezzanine gate particularly demonstrates the simultaneous boost in safety and efficiency made possible with innovative fall protection equipment.
Mezzanines are a major point of interest to compliance regulators because they’re a permanent fixture of the facility and built to stronger standards, meaning they support larger, heavier items. Therefore, your mezzanine safety measures must be equally robust.
The main fall protection challenge of mezzanines is the fact that workers must contend with two leading edges at different times. The traditional solution was to manually open only one gate at a time after closing the other gate. However, this left a worker in harm’s way every time equipment and materials entered or exited the mezzanine. A more fail-safe mezzanine gate accomplishes this open/close dynamic automatically, with a counterbalanced lift design that only allows one gate to open at a time.
Such automatic self-closing mezzanine gates come in two varieties:
- Vertical lift, for when lateral space is lacking; each gate is counterbalanced in such a way that they cannot open together
- Horizontal pivot, where a 90° top-lift dual-gate enclosure passively blocks one leading edge at a time
The goal is to load a mezzanine with minimal fall or other safety hazards, which generally conforms to the following process:
- Deliver a load to the mezzanine while the worker-accessible gate is closed
- After delivering the load, the load gate closes and the worker gate opens, either in sequence or simultaneously
- A worker accesses and removes the load, after which the gates change their open/close status again in anticipation for the next load
Note that this process also impacts workflow by providing workers on both sides of the mezzanine gate with a designated point of contact. This is because the rest of the mezzanine, as with any walking working platform four ft (1.2 m) or higher, requires fall arrest barriers along the entire perimeter of every leading edge.
It’s important to use adaptable guardrail systems that tightly integrate into the mezzanine gates, leaving minimal gaps. As with any industrial safety gate, a mezzanine gate can replace a section of guardrail, but only when built to the same force resistance and other fall arrest standards, especially:
- OSHA CFR 1910.23, “Guarding floor and wall openings and holes,” which requires uninterrupted protection at any leading edge
- ANSI MH28.3-2009, “Specification for the Design, Manufacture, and Installation of Industrial Steel Work Platforms,” which requires a full barrier around pallet drops, even during loading or unloading
Warehouses simply can’t meet mezzanine safety standards with single-barrier gates, even with the most diligent manual protocols. Instead, facilities depend on an integrated pair of self-closing dual-swing gates, which meet the most advanced regulatory and technical industry standards.
Equally Effective Cost Reduction Measures
Aside from the need for mezzanine gates, along with a drastic reduction in potential accidents and fines, they also enhance workplace efficiency for greater ongoing revenue gains. This is due primarily to the speed, efficiency, and simplicity of mezzanine gates, which you can tangibly measure in terms of time savings and the amount of materials handled.
The right industrial safety gate of any kind provides a range of less quantifiable, yet essential, benefits, including:
- Reduced need for manual operation
- Minimal worker distraction
- Protection of critical work resources
- Greater workplace morale
- Safe movement and storage of large amounts of material
Applying the Same Principles to Elevated Platforms
Many of these same considerations apply more broadly to any walking-working surface. While not as high capacity as mezzanines, generic elevated platforms’ fall protection requirements are just as urgent.
In fact, their utility covers an even broader range of compliance and safety requirements. This is where self-closing, extended-coverage platform gates are essential:
- Machine guarding when the machine must remain accessible
- Secure, easy-access enclosures around stairs, ladders, and hatches
- In place of almost any modular guardrail
- Access controls, such as for restricted areas
In every case discussed here or elsewhere, it’s important to consult directly with your controlling regulatory standards, including OSHA or CCOHS. Then, compare any given piece of equipment to the regulatory standards you expect the device to fulfill.
Safety Gates for Maximum Mezzanine and Elevated Platform Protection
Nowhere is industrial safety put to the test than on a high-capacity mezzanine, which involves the intersection of numerous potential safety hazards:
- Heavy lifting operations
- Multiple leading edges
- Large, potentially uneven loads
- Frequent manipulation of heavy materials and mobile equipment
- A strict sequence of several timing-dependent fall protection tasks
At Fabenco, we take these and all other fall protection scenarios to heart, because we know the true value of your operations depends on the interrelationship between workplace efficiency and safety.
Contact us to learn more about our self-closing platform gates, modular guardrails, and other innovative fall protection solutions. We’re American made and fully prepared to help you achieve maximum economy of safety in your facility.
