Falls from height are one of the biggest causes of workplace fatalities and major injuries. These include falls from ladders, slipping and falling from loads and access steps, and falls from fragile surfaces.
The safety-tested platform, designed and developed by MFS, is said to be an industry first and has achieved a 90% reduction in the need to work from a ladder, thus reducing the risks of falls from height, lower limb fatigue/discomfort and is a significant ergonomic improvement, especially when replacing heavy or cumbersome parts.
Colin Wilkinson, head of health & safety at MFS, said: “Working from ladders has sometimes been the only option to our fleet engineers until now. We developed this platform because we recognised that this was a widespread issue that needed to be addressed and we had a responsibility to find a safe, sensible, and low-risk solution for our engineers to use daily as an alternative to using ladders.”
The new platform is said to be easy to deploy and reduces the manual handling risks associated with carrying ladders as well as providing shelter from variable weather conditions and most importantly allows engineers to work at height from a strong, stable, and ultra-safe environment.
Wilkinson continues: “The development has been an in-depth process of trialling and testing with reviews and assessments towards continuous improvement in order to arrive at the production platform we have today. Our customers have been very supportive throughout the entire process.”
Ivan Sutton, lead engineer at MFS and the first to trial and use the new platform, said: “We have been using the platform on a daily basis for a number of months now and it has received very positive feedback from our engineers. No one in our sector has gone to the trouble of designing a vehicle-access platform that keeps engineers safe and reduces risk for our customers, so we are pleased to be the first.”
Mick Pethard, head of engineering at Gist, said: “Working safely at height is of the utmost importance to our daily working practises. We have been actively involved in the process of trialling and testing this cutting-edge platform developed by Marshall Fleet Solutions and see it as an essential and welcome addition to health and safety in our sector.”