Airport Pedestrian and Vehicle Safety Barriers

Company A-Safe (UK) Ltd
Date 27.04.2015

If you could empty your warehouse or facility and lay it out again from scratch, how would you start?

Logistics may begin at the end of the first production line, but simple facility efficiency starts way before that; before things start moving, before the machinery starts to whirr, before packaging and trucks and 3PL comes into play.

Imagine your facility stripped back and bare – primed for streamlining and ready to work. Key to a modern facility layout are your Health & Safety considerations. Indeed, logistics and Health & Safety are much more closely entwined than a lot of people think. Health & Safety at its forward-thinking best will, over a sustained period, protect against the kind of production stoppages that are the stuff of logistical nightmares – workplace accidents, staff injuries, damage to structures and machinery.

For those progressive facilities managers who understand the vital role of Health & Safety in preventing downtime, the implementation of a fit-for-purpose barrier system is right at the heart of their facility’s architecture.

Why? Because a modern, flexible barrier system doesn’t just provide a protective guard for personnel, it will help organise a facility. It will direct traffic, it will segregate vehicles from pedestrians, it will protect vital structures and machinery, it will dramatically cut maintenance costs and it will, ultimately, provide a serious and sustained return in investment.

So take your empty facility and perhaps start by asking this: ‘How can I make this place safe, so that it functions at its most efficient?’

Barrier specialists A-SAFE have always had a scientific approach to Health & Safety – and a major part of this approach starts before any of their barriers are in place. To understand why, let’s examine the flaws of a quick-fix barrier ‘solution’.

A facility manager might be aware of the need for a barrier through workplace impacts, insurance purposes or basic Health & Safety knowledge, so he asks the local metal fabricators to manufacture something and, after a few nuts, bolts and hammer blows, a steel barrier is in place. The problems with this approach, however, are manifold.

How could anybody know if the barrier is capable of dealing with the potential vehicle impact forces in that particular workplace? Is the barrier placed strategically, with consideration to impact angles and proper segregation of pedestrians? What about barrier deflection after impact? What about floor damage and maintenance costs? What about the height of the barrier?

To understand if a barrier is fit for its basic purpose (to withstand impact forces from workplace vehicles), then the potential forces of vehicles operating within each particular workplace need to be properly understood, as well as the potential angles of impact.

Here is A-SAFE’s scientific approach in a nutshell. When these factors are understood, A-SAFE can measure them against the tried-and-tested capabilities of their own TÜV-tested barriers and select products that are indeed fit-for-purpose.

With A-SAFE, a barrier is installed only as part of a traffic management programme that organises a facility so that pedestrians and vehicles are segregated wherever practicable. On top of this, barriers are implemented strategically to guide traffic and people safely around a facility, removing the hard angles and vehicle-pedestrian intermixing that is often the cause of accidents.

Steel is strong – but it has severe limitations. When a vehicle impacts a rigid steel barrier 100% of the forces are transferred directly to the floor fixings, resulting in a crumpled barrier and a ripped-up floor.

A-SAFE barriers are made from an ultra-strong plastic-rubber blend that flexes when impacted, absorbing the forces and dissipating them throughout the material – in turn, only 20% of impact forces make it to the fixings, ensuring they stay intact and the barrier remains fit-for-purpose.

Height of barrier also needs to be taken into account – should the barriers have floor-level protection that guards against, for example, FLT forks? Deflection needs to be considered – are the barriers sufficiently distanced from structures so that zero forces are transferred to them post-impact?

Sadly, even in today’s Health & Safety-conscious workplaces, barriers are still installed that simply don’t meet their purpose. Some barriers might even look like a cutting edge modern system, but still perform poorly.

Take your empty facility – or your existing facility – and ask again how it could be improved. And let the industry leaders A-SAFE add brawn and brains to your barrier network.

Contact

A-Safe (UK) Ltd
Habergham Works
Ainleys Industrial Estate
Elland
Halifax
United Kingdom
HX5 9JP
  • 01422 344402