Download Your FREE Pallet Racking Inspection Form Before Winter

Winter can be tough on racking systems, so be sure to download a FREE pallet racking inspection form before it comes.

With winter fast approaching, there’s never been a better time to download a pallet racking inspection form and institute a proper inspection system in your warehouse. This is because, for many people in the warehousing and storage industry, winter isn’t just the coldest time of the year. The slow approach of Christmas (an event which some businesses start planning for in the summer) means that it can also be the busiest.

Christmas brings with it a tide of orders for products of all kinds. It’s a huge boon for businesses of all kinds across the country and it can really help to boost the economy. There’s a lot more to Christmas, of course, but the extra sales are what make businesses merry during this time of year.

The problem for warehouses is that all of this extra business couldn’t come at a worse time. Cold can bring illnesses, slippery floors, ice and a whole bunch of other winter-related injuries to your warehouse.

With so much going on during the winter period, it’s important to get a handle on things now. While your warehouse is still relatively quiet and warm, download our FREE pallet racking inspection form.

Why Do I Need a Pallet Racking Inspection Form?

HSE recommends annual racking inspections from a SEMA approved racking inspector (SARI). This is an important racking inspection service, but it’s not the whole story. In order to maintain the safety of your racking system in between visits from a SARI, HSE also recommends regular racking inspections from staff.

HSE recommends that the person performing this task is competent. Moreover, according to the CDM regulations, anyone working in your warehouse should be competent. In order to achieve this, we offer racking inspection training, but we also offer a checklist which staff can use once they’ve completed the training in order to perform regular racking inspections.

How Do Pallet Racking Inspection Forms Work?

Ours is pretty simple. We outline all of the different parts of a racking system: uprights, frame bracing, base plate, beam connectors, etc. Alongside each part is the option to mark it as green, amber, or red. The green, amber, red system is one recommended by HSE.

Green means the system is fine. Amber means that there is damage, so the system needs to be offloaded immediately and it needs to be repaired as soon as possible within four weeks. Red means that there is damage so that the system needs to be offloaded immediately and it needs to be repaired immediately.

Why Download Our Pallet Racking Inspection Form?

Aside from the fact that you should download our pallet racking inspection form because it’s FREE, our pallet racking inspection is also one of the only ones written by a SEMA approved pallet racking inspector who is also a SEMA approved cantilever racking inspector.

Our SARI’s wide range of racking system knowledge is why the racking inspection form which you can download from SEE is of a higher quality than other racking inspection forms. However, don’t just take our word for it. Download it for FREE and see for yourself how our pallet racking inspection form will improve your warehouse’s safety in time for the cold and busy winter period.

As well as a FREE pallet racking inspection form, we also offer FREE consultations. So, for racking inspection training, pallet racking inspections and other racking inspection services, contact Storage Equipment Experts today.

An unkempt warehouse is abundant with dangers, but a warehouse racking safety checklist can dramatically reduce those dangers

Warehouses aren’t inherently dangerous, but a warehouse filled with untrained staff who have no system for inspecting racking systems can be a dangerous thing. This is what makes warehouse racking safety checklists so important. A fuller appreciation of that importance can be gained by better understanding the specific dangers they can prevent.

1. Warehouse Racking Safety Checklists Prevent Distractions

Distractions are everywhere at work. Your home life, other members of staff, the things you need to do when work finishes: it’s perfectly natural to be juggling thoughts about all of these things while you’re working. The issue is when these thoughts interfere with something which requires your full attention — and a warehouse racking safety inspection requires your full attention.

Having a warehouse racking safety checklist means that you know exactly what you are doing when you doing it; it allows you to be in the moment.

2. Warehouse Racking Safety Checklists Create Routine

It was Oscar Wilde who said “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative”. However, when it comes to business, consistency is a wildly underappreciated thing. Breaking new ground and expanding into new areas is great. With regards to safety, though, it’s a lot better to keep things consistent.

When HSE gives its advice on staff-led racking inspections, it doesn’t say “once a week” or “once a month”. Instead, its emphasis is on “regular” racking inspections. There’s good reason for this. Safety is a process which should always be happening. It’s not something you should be “topping up” on if a couple of accidents have happened earlier that week.

A routine for safety ensures that the important work of safety gets done. It means you can resist the temptation to ignore it just because an accident hasn’t happened in a while. You remind yourself that perhaps the reason an accident hasn’t happened is directly due to the routine.

As mentioned above, when inspections are done infrequently, they run the risk of not being done at all. Yet, they also run the risk of being unreliable due to a lack of practice and context.

With regards to practice, quality racking inspections require training — just like anything else. If your staff are to use our warehouse racking inspection checklist, we would only recommend doing so after racking inspection training from a SEMA approved racking inspector. Even then, though, performing racking inspections infrequently means that the knowledge from this training fades away, as it is the regular application of learned knowledge that helps to cement it. With regards to context, your staff can’t know whether a system is acting normally unless they know what normal looks like.

In short, a warehouse without routine is chaotic. Warehouse racking safety checklists prevent that.

3. Warehouse Racking Safety Checklists Stop Laziness

Following on from the last point, lazy staff are rarely intrinsically lazy. More often than not, they are taught to be lazy by a working environment where tasks are not made clear and routine is not expected.

With regards to staff-led racking inspections, performing them with a warehouse racking safety checklist makes the process hard to quantify. A staff member might decide, from a distance, that they have “pretty much” inspected everything because they don’t have anywhere to jot down their observations or what they’ve inspected.

While that extreme case imagines a particularly lazy staff member, it isn’t a stretch to imagine an otherwise reliable staff member missing one or two things because they don’t need to write anything down or refer to anything.

This is a kind of laziness, too, but it’s one which can be easily prevented by giving your staff a checklist to note down what they have and haven’t inspected. A well-made checklist is made specific recommendations for specific parts of a racking system. Asking a staff member to use one while performing their inspection will encourage them to be specific and accurate, too.

To help prevent dangers in your warehouse, download our FREE warehouse racking safety checklist

Contact us for a FREE consultation on our full range of racking inspection services.