Ground-level workshop and warehouses’ potential fall hazards can dramatically increase whenever a shop scales up operations, invests in new equipment, or increases their workforce. To help you minimize risk and protect workers when you find your shop floor in this position, we’ll explore five of the most reliable uses of modular railing for machinery and mezzanines, access control gates, and other important fall protection devices.
An Overview of Ground-Level Fall Protection
First, it’s important to get a good understanding of non-working-at-height fall hazards, including how they often blend into fall hazards at height. Many facilities have both active ground-floor operations and upper levels, lifting operations, and other combination factors influencing how they should implement their warehouse fall protection measures.
For ground-level activity, the most common fall protection issues include:
- Machines that could cause laceration, electrocution, or other injuries
- Lifting operations and suspended equipment or materials
- Stacked materials, whether stored on an elevated platform or not
- Forklift and other lifting equipment operations
- Wherever unsecured tools or other materials could fall onto workers below
What many facility owners and technicians forget about potential fall hazards is that you don’t need to be above a designated threshold (e.g., four feet for general industry). Tripping hazards, falling objects, and similar issues all constitute fall hazards, even at ground level.
We’ll explore these issues in more depth with our five top tips for protecting workers from ground-level fall risks in shop or warehouse settings.
Tip #1: Don’t Overload Storage Areas
While workers are rightly the primary focus of fall safety efforts, it’s important to keep as much attention on the potential for falling objects. Any fall hazard issue depends on mastering not just the way workforces operate, but understanding the environments they work in as well.
How a facility manages material storage and accessibility is one of the most important factors of warehouse fall protection. Our first tip for safety managers is to always view fall safety from the perspective of simultaneously preventing employee falls and reducing the risk of falling objects. The latter can easily be of equal or greater importance in warehouses of any size or type.
Tip #2: Improve Mezzanine Access and Security
It’s also important to secure mezzanines, industrial shelves, and other overhead storage areas, but without making them difficult to use. Due to the variety and irregularity of warehouse storage methods, there are often several steps to optimizing mezzanine and other elevated-storage practices:
- Following OSHA’s general requirements for storage
- Keeping surrounding area free of obstacles
- Placing storage zones away from entry points
- Transitioning to more customizable and easily installed modular guardrails
- Investing in fully tested mezzanine gates designed to open on only one side at a time
- Ensuring your guardrails are easy to modify as your needs change
Tip #3: Guard Machines Without Making Accessibility Difficult
We’ve addressed OSHA machine guarding requirements extensively before, and in highly productive workshop environments, it’s likely you’ll have a wide range of equipment to protect. The notion of “protecting equipment” goes both ways: preventing equipment from being damaged by mobile heavy equipment, but more importantly, keeping employees safe from potential injuries, including:
- Falling onto equipment from any height
- Tripping and falling onto equipment, even from ground level
- Blocking access to machines that could injure limbs, fingers, or any body part
- Keeping people away from dynamic moving machine components
The question is, how do you block access to a machine without preventing authorized technicians from accessing it when needed? The answer is found in one of two solutions, or a combination of both:
- Modular railing for machinery, built with interchangeable parts and easy hand-tool installation
- Self-closing safety gates designed with maximum adaptability (including vertical lift gates for tight quarters)
If possible, you can also prevent machine guarding safety issues to begin with by placing the most potentially dangerous machines out of harm’s way. Another solution is using remote-operated machines, and choose the best safety features, like easy-open/close service panels, when shopping for new equipment.
Tip #4: Master the Identification of Machine Hazards
Of course, this means knowing where and when OSHA machine guarding requirements apply, and recognizing machine hazards is often half the battle. You can only win that ongoing challenge by starting with a thorough understanding of your OSHA and CCOHS regulations. There are also more user-friendly sites and apps available to help you stay on top of regulatory changes, but always rely primarily on official source materials.
Generally, you can expect machine guarding safety standards to apply whenever a machine has any of the following:
- Open designs, where workers could touch moving parts like gears, pistons, or capstans/rollers
- Blades, drills, and other components that could cut or pierce employees
- Components that pose crushing hazards
- High voltage, especially if there are exposed wires or electrical connections
- Moving parts that extend outward
- Machines not secured to the floor that could topple over with enough force
Also be aware of how to shut power off to each machine (individually) in your workshop and ensure modular railing for machinery or any other barrier isn’t blocking access to this critical spot.
Tip #5: Prevent and Clean Spills and Other Slip Hazards
In an industrial setting, there are numerous potential sources for oil, water, and solvent spills. Dry substances, such as powder and dust, can also create slippery surfaces. A simple fall can be hazardous under the best circumstances; if your staff is carrying heavy or sharp objects, risks can increase.
Stay vigilant for spills and other slip hazards, particularly around the following:
- Machines that produce condensation, such as heat exchangers
- Oil slicks caused by mobile machinery – which also might be covered by OSHA machine guarding requirements
- Cutting or grinding equipment that produces dust or particulates
- Ice in cold storage areas or outside entryways
- Unanchored mats, rugs, or other surface coverings
- Flooring without textures
- Chemical processing equipment
- Humid or moist weather conditions
Keeping Warehouse and Workshops Safe at Any Level
Machine guarding safety is a critical aspect of any warehouse fall protection plan. This extends to most workshops, warehouses, and similar industrial facilities, whether they have multiple levels or a single floor. From stacked storage materials to tripping/slipping hazards and more, fall hazards apply to falling materials just as well as people.
Fabenco, a Tractel brand, specializes in versatile safety gates and modular railing for machinery, mezzanines, and other specialized locations, where standard railing presents significant drawbacks. You can contact us with further questions, and tell our committed fall safety experts about your workshop’s fall safety concerns.
