5 Ways to Make Your Industrial Flooring Safer, More Efficient, and More Compliant

From stay­ing com­pli­ant with indus­try reg­u­la­tions to sav­ing your busi­ness thou­sands of dol­lars on pos­si­ble employ­ee com­pen­sa­tion claims because of slip and fall acci­dents, there are many rea­sons to ensure your indus­tri­al floor­ing stays clean and safe for use.

If you’re ask­ing, ​“How do I make my floor safe?” you’re in luck. In this arti­cle, we’ll dis­cuss five things you can do to ensure the floor in your com­mer­cial prop­er­ty does not give you any problems.

1. Under­stand­ing OSHA and GMP Stan­dards and Require­ments for Indus­tri­al Flooring

Com­pli­ance is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of facil­i­ty man­age­ment and own­er­ship and should nev­er be tak­en light­ly. Reg­u­la­tions and stan­dards exist to ensure safe­ty, pro­tect the envi­ron­ment, and pro­mote eth­i­cal busi­ness practices.

The Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Admin­is­tra­tion (OSHA) is one of the reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies in the Unit­ed States. Any facil­i­ty man­ag­er should be famil­iar with it. But the ques­tion is, do you know their occu­pa­tion­al and safe­ty stan­dards? If not, it’s time to learn about them. 

In the con­text of indus­tri­al floor­ing, OSHA stan­dards require that floors be kept clean and dry, while walk­ing and work­ing sur­faces should be free of haz­ards. There are no com­plex require­ments, so they should be easy to follow.

Anoth­er set of guide­lines that can help your facil­i­ty main­tain safer, more effi­cient, and com­pli­ant indus­tri­al floor­ing is the Good Man­u­fac­tur­ing Prac­tice (GMP). GMP is a set of reg­u­la­tions that gov­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing prod­ucts for human con­sump­tion. GMP stan­dards are designed to ensure that prod­ucts are safe, effec­tive, and high-quality.

Com­ply­ing with OSHA and GMP stan­dards for indus­tri­al floor­ing is essen­tial for ensur­ing work­place safe­ty and main­tain­ing prod­uct qual­i­ty. Fail­ure to meet these stan­dards can result in fines, legal lia­bil­i­ty, and pos­si­bly dam­age to a com­pa­ny’s reputation.

2. Install the Right Type of Flooring

Accord­ing to the Nation­al Floor Safe­ty Insti­tute, 85% of employ­ee com­pen­sa­tion claims in the Unit­ed States are due to slip and fall acci­dents. And 55% of them hap­pen because of haz­ardous flooring.

Sev­er­al floor­ing haz­ards can increase the chance of trips and falls, includ­ing floor crack­ing and spalling, uneven sur­faces, unmarked stairs, dust, pow­der, grease, and debris left on the floor. Floors also get slip­pery when wet.

Some busi­ness­es can eas­i­ly elim­i­nate these haz­ards through prop­er floor main­te­nance. But in oth­er facil­i­ties, these haz­ards are part of the oper­a­tion. For exam­ple, it will be chal­leng­ing to com­plete­ly remove the risk if your process­es involve using liq­uids. In this case, installing anti-slip floor­ing can help solve the issue.

Gen­er­al­ly, you must ensure the floor in your facil­i­ty suits the pur­pose or use of the area. The right floor­ing mate­r­i­al can pro­tect your peo­ple and oth­er assets. For instance, facil­i­ties that store or use elec­tron­ics will ben­e­fit sig­nif­i­cant­ly from elec­tro­sta­t­ic dis­charge (ESD) floor­ing. This type of floor pro­tects elec­tron­ics from dam­age from sta­t­ic elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­at­ed when peo­ple walk. 

If heavy machin­ery or vehi­cles are dri­ven around the facil­i­ty, you’ll need a durable and stur­dy floor to with­stand the pres­sure. One of the options, in this case, is an epoxy mor­tar resur­fac­er. This mate­r­i­al can with­stand 10,000 pounds per square inch (PSI) or more, which is two to three times more than con­crete floor­ing can handle.

3. Use Col­or to Iden­ti­fy Dif­fer­ent Areas of Your Facility

In addi­tion to ensur­ing your facil­i­ty has the right kind of floor, using col­ors can also improve safe­ty in the work­place. Safe­ty col­ors are used to inform work­ers of the haz­ards present in a par­tic­u­lar area.

For exam­ple, red indi­cates the pres­ence of fire pro­tec­tion equip­ment. On the oth­er hand, yel­low means there are phys­i­cal haz­ards. Right now, there are no wide­ly accept­ed or gov­ern­ment-man­dat­ed stan­dards about what col­ors to uti­lize when mark­ing floors. How­ev­er, your facil­i­ty can fol­low safe­ty col­or stan­dards used by rep­utable organizations. 

One of the orga­ni­za­tions that pro­vides safe­ty col­or rec­om­men­da­tions is the Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Asso­ci­a­tion (OSHA), and the oth­er is the Amer­i­can Nation­al Stan­dards Insti­tute (ANSI). Most safe­ty col­ors from these two orga­ni­za­tions have the same meaning.

4. Imple­ment a Main­te­nance Plan to Keep Your Floor­ing in Good Condition

If your facil­i­ty does­n’t have a floor main­te­nance plan, now is the time to cre­ate one. An indus­tri­al facil­i­ty’s floor­ing is sub­ject­ed to harsh con­di­tions, such as heavy foot traf­fic, equip­ment move­ment, spills, and chem­i­cal expo­sure. With­out prop­er main­te­nance, the floor­ing can get dirty and dam­aged over time.

Repair­ing a dam­aged floor will cost your busi­ness mon­ey. Depend­ing on the issue, the repair ser­vice can cost a few hun­dred or even thou­sands of dol­lars. The need for repair can also cause down­time and delays in your oper­a­tions, which also means loss of profit.

Addi­tion­al­ly, a dam­aged and dirty floor is a safe­ty haz­ard. Unkempt floors can cre­ate more trip­ping and slip­ping haz­ards. Work­ers exposed to bac­te­ria on the floor can also devel­op health prob­lems. And since a dirty work­place vio­lates spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions, your facil­i­ty can face legal consequences.

There­fore, it’s cru­cial to have a main­te­nance plan in place. The spe­cif­ic main­te­nance activ­i­ties and prod­ucts you’ll need depend on the floor­ing mate­r­i­al. For exam­ple, a pol­ished con­crete floor requires dai­ly dust mop­ping and pH-neu­tral clean­ing solu­tions. On the oth­er hand, indus­tri­al epoxy floor­ing sys­tems are high­ly chem­i­cal resis­tant so you can use a wide vari­ety of clean­ing solu­tions and not dam­age the floor­ing system.

Floor­ing con­trac­tors can help you cre­ate a cus­tom floor main­te­nance plan. So, if you don’t have a prop­er main­te­nance plan, con­sid­er enlist­ing an expert’s help. Floor­ing con­trac­tors can help you tai­lor your facil­i­ty’s dai­ly clean­ing and main­te­nance tasks to your budget.

5. Train Employ­ees on How to Use Indus­tri­al Floor­ing Safely

Employ­ees should be aware of the pos­si­ble dan­gers on the floor, so they can avoid seri­ous injuries and acci­dents while they car­ry out their dai­ly tasks. They should also be mind­ful of essen­tial floor safe­ty prac­tices. Using meth­ods like safe­ty col­ors will have no effect if your employ­ees don’t know what they mean in the first place.

That’s why giv­ing safe­ty train­ing is impor­tant. Every facil­i­ty should devel­op floor train­ing pro­grams that are com­pre­hen­sive and per­ti­nent. Every employ­ee should be trained when they join your team and when the facil­i­ty imple­ments new safe­ty practices.

Indus­tri­al floor­ing must be kept in good con­di­tion to ensure employ­ee and cus­tomer safe­ty and com­pli­ance with indus­try reg­u­la­tions. Also, remem­ber that the look of your facil­i­ty affects the way your employ­ees and cus­tomers per­ceive your busi­ness. If the floor­ing is not in its best state, it can neg­a­tive­ly affect your rep­u­ta­tion and your bot­tom line.

Main­tain­ing indus­tri­al floor­ing does not often come cheap. How­ev­er, com­pared to the pos­si­ble loss­es and con­se­quences of hav­ing a dirty and dam­aged floor, the amount you pay for prod­ucts and floor con­trac­tors is less cost­ly in the long run.

Let Pro­fes­sion­als Main­tain Your Indus­tri­al Flooring

Main­tain­ing indus­tri­al floor­ing can be a daunt­ing and time-con­sum­ing task. It requires exper­tise and spe­cial­ized equip­ment to ensure the floor­ing remains safe, effi­cient, and compliant.

Pro­fes­sion­al floor­ing con­trac­tors can keep your floors in opti­mal con­di­tion, extend­ing their lifes­pan and reduc­ing the like­li­hood of acci­dents and injuries. No mat­ter what indus­tri­al floor coat­ings you have in your facil­i­ty, experts can help you iden­ti­fy the best main­te­nance prac­tices and prod­ucts for them. 

Fur­ther­more, floor­ing con­trac­tors can pro­vide tai­lored main­te­nance plans that suit the busi­ness’s needs. These can include reg­u­lar inspec­tions, clean­ing, repairs, and advice on opti­miz­ing the floor­ing for bet­ter safe­ty, effi­cien­cy, and compliance.

For more on indus­tri­al floor­ing, please don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact Kaloutas today. With Kaloutas, you have a part­ner that will take care of all your facility’s floor­ing needs.