PUBLIC SECTOR A SAFE DECISION


Mark Hoskins, specifications consultant with Altro, considers one of the most common dilemmas faced by hospital estates managers and capital projects managers: where to specify safety flooring, and how to make that choice. In which areas of a hospital


should you specify slip- resistant flooring? On the


face of it, this should be a fairly


straightforward problem to solve: areas with a high slip risk – showers, bathrooms, kitchens – definitely need slip-resistant flooring. However, beyond that, the decisions are not so obvious to make. Ward areas for example are not usually wet but there are certainly opportunities for spillages. Café areas again could be an area of slip risk, some would argue for safety flooring, others would argue against. And corridors? Well, that depends where they are in the building and how they’re used.


Some Trusts will always opt for a ‘better safe than sorry’ approach, yet others are more cautious in their use of safety floors. Perhaps unsurprisingly, where a Trust has previously had incidents of slips and trips with the associated far-reaching consequences, we see a marked difference in their approach to specifying safety flooring, and we would always direct people to the useful Health and Safety Executive (HSE) hazard spotting checklist for slips and trips.


Across all sectors, slips and trips make up 50% of all reported accidents to members of the public that happen in workplaces, cost employers £512m per year in lost production and other costs, and the cost to health services is £133m per year.


Safety flooring is specifically engineered to minimise slip risk by creating a surface to the flooring so that the foot and floor connect even when surface contaminants such as liquids or grease are present, and this slip resistance can be maintained throughout the life of the flooring.


“Slips and trips make up 50% of all reported accidents to members of the public that happen in workplaces.”


The HSE sets out the various methods for assessing the slip resistance of flooring, setting a standard for low slip potential at a Pendulum Test Value (PTV) of ≥36. In terms of the protection this delivers, at Altro we confidently state our safety floors reduce your chance of slipping to one in a million for the lifetime of the flooring.


When it comes to cleaning, due to the surface finish needed to provide minimised slip risk, safety floors need a different cleaning regime than a traditional smooth floor. The right cleaning methods are vital for maintaining the effectiveness of the slip-resistance features.


36


As you would imagine, we spend a great deal of time and effort working on the cleanability of our safety floors. We have seen huge steps forward as advances led to ‘easyclean’ technologies delivering hugely improved stain resistance, reduced dirt pick-up, and better scratch and abrasion resistance. In fact, Altro has maintained for some time now that a safety floor can be cleaned very effectively, but the process is different to a smooth floor.


“Improved cleanability has led to greater freedom for inclusion of a wider range of colours as seen in the far broader palettes and


non-sparkle design options for safety flooring.”


We do sometimes see situations where all floors in a hospital building are cleaned with the same method, regardless of the surface. This may be to save time and money, or perhaps cleaning teams are working overnight and might not be familiar with the different requirements of different areas. Infection control and cleaning has been more essential than ever over the past few years, with increased pressure on cleaning teams to deliver, which makes it extremely important that we have open and transparent conversations about cleaning, hygiene, safety and slip resistance.


We work hard to improve education around correct cleaning methods, teaming up over the last 10 years with Delia Cannings,


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