If you’ve ever visited an NHS store, you’ll know we take our safety seriously. We have many safety systems in place to protect all our NHS family – our team, our customers, and any other visitors on site.
We are constantly assessing our safety measures to ensure we are up to date with the safety legislations along with a safety committee for each store, headed up by our WHS Manager, Rachel Marshall.
Did you know that in just the last 5 months in NSW, there have been 2 fatalities where forklifts were involved? (you can read the safety bulletin/s here if you’d like to read more)
And if you’ve ever been to one of our stores, you’ll know we use forklifts a lot. So understandably, forklift safety is very important to us. This is why we use barricades and spotters as one of those forklift related safety systems.
Barricades
NHS uses safety barricades as a risk control measure to protect personnel from hazards, such as forklift operations, materials falling from a height etc.
The safety barricades used at NHS are a fluorescent yellow tape style (shown in pic).
If a safety barricade is deployed, then no pedestrian is permitted in that area until the barricade is removed.
Never walk under a barricade.
Safe Work NSW recommend that you must keep a safe distance away from any operating forklift at all times, relative to the speed the forklift is operating and the height of the forklift. NHS deems this to be a minimum distance of 3 metres from any operating forklift and the extremities of its load.
Spotters
We also use a spotter when a forklift is required to be in a customer zone, except where a barricade is deployed.
A spotter's responsibility is to help make sure the forklift and its load don’t come in contact with any people or objects by acting as another set of eyes, communicating with the forklift operator and keeping pedestrians away from the hazard area.
So next time you’re onsite at a NHS store, please adhere to our safety signs and the measures we have in place.
If you ever have any questions about any of our safety systems, please don’t hesitate to chat to one of our team who will be happy to discuss it with you.
If this article has got you thinking safety on your own work sites, you can also check out the range of safety equipment we have at NHS.