COVER STORY
ARE YOU PREPARED
TO TAKE A GAMBLE ON THE WINTER?
It's never too early to plan your winter gritting regime and to put staff and customer safety first, says Vicky Lopez, Co-founder and Commercial Director of De-Ice, one of the UK’s longest-established winter gritting and snow clearance specialists.
The weather in the UK is a constant game of chance. The last three winters have all been relatively mild, with few major snow events. But, the question remains, will the cards fall the same this year?
As one of the country's longest established winter gritting and snow clearance providers, we have experienced every type of weather - from heavy snowfall to flooding and record high temperatures during the middle of winter. The only thing that is certain is that no two winters are ever the same. To illustrate this, tracking our data over the last five years, we can show that in central Derbyshire,
20 | TOMORROW’S FM
as an example, during the winter of 2012/13 (November-March) the temperature reached zero-or-below 82 times. In contrast, during winter 2015/16, this only happened 13 times.
FACILITIES SHOW 2016 We'll be asking FMs at this year's
Facilities Show if they can really afford to take a chance, and risk the safety of site visitors and staff?
No one can predict what the coming 2016/17 winter has in store this early in the year - whether we are due to have arctic conditions or another mild winter. But, what we do know is that relying on what happened last season,
to predict what may happen the next is a risky tactic, and being unprepared will set you on a slippery slope to open ended risk and litigation.
The risk of restricted or unsafe access to your premises poses a massive threat to your workforce, suppliers and visitors. Equally, it will hamper an organisation's ability to continue to operate in inclement weather. We only have to refer back to statistics from harsh winters. During the last El Niño (2009/2010), we saw heavy snowfall, which brought transport chaos to much of the country. Airports were closed and train services suspended. In
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