With many companies now looking ahead to the winter months, it’s a good time to plan your enhanced maintenance schedule, and ensure you’re best prepared to make the most of unpredictable weather.

The colder months and specifically the Christmas shutdown presents opportunities to carry out operational audits, stock checks, and repair or servicing of premises and equipment.

Now is the time to carry out a more frequent risk assessment to identify any potential issues that may impact safe and effective operations during winter. This may involve assessing the wider workplace environment to ascertain any potential hazards, as well as looking at any vulnerabilities from an equipment operator perspective, identifying who and/or what may be at risk and the level of risk, implementing appropriate control measures.

In fact, under LOLER 98 & PUWER 98 regulations, it is law for your forklift attachment to have a periodic examination, known as a Thorough Examination, to ensure all safety components have been formally inspected and assessed as being in a safe condition.

The unexpected can, and does, happen however. If unscheduled or emergency repair work does become necessary, particularly at height, our Forklift Safety Platforms can be used, with the WP-ECONOMY option suitable for both one and two person, offering a fixed step-through entry to ensure utmost protection when in use, while also completely PM28 compliant. 

In addition to our extensive range of platforms, we offer various winter products including snow ploughs, towable or pedestrian salt spreaders, and sweepers to help businesses operate during more extreme weather conditions.

It's also vital that regular checks are undertaken to ensure all forklift attachments are functioning as they should be. Naturally, the most suitable person to do this is the operator themselves as they will be the one with the greatest understanding and insight into how the attachment works on a daily basis and will be best placed to identify any reduction in effectiveness or output. 

It may be that your team requires formal training in how to operate equipment safely and to ensure optimum functionality. Every one of our attachments comes with a full set of instructions, but you could need more in-depth, ‘hands-on’ support.

Our highly qualified and experienced team can offer this to you on-site, and our training covers both attachments manufactured by us as well as those manufactured elsewhere.

Contact us to find out more about how we can help you be as prepared as possible for everything the winter months have in store for us this year.