Scafftag Equip – Expert equipment status management advice and support
June 1st 2007

Like every other aspect of modern living, legislation and regulations are moving faster and faster. For the safety professional, well versed in law and committed to understanding what the latest legislative edicts mean, keeping up to date is a challenging task. For the lay person, who has operational commitments, it is nigh on impossible.

Interpreting what and how legislation applies to the vast variety of different equipment employees use each day becomes an even more complex task. And then of course there is practical challenge of ensuring management processes are in place to know which equipment needs inspecting and when, in line with these duties.

However, help is at hand in the form of Scafftag Equip. Equip is the new systematic equipment status management package only available from Scafftag. Effective equipment status management requires a set of systems to be in place for conducting appropriate risk assessments, carrying out regular equipment inspections, recording and monitoring equipment inspections and providing ongoing training for employees. Equip provides a structure programme, tools and product solutions to develop and continuously improve these systems.

Risk assessment Risk assessment is the cornerstone of any successful health and safety policy. The right risk assessment will identify the appropriate equipment for the task, as well as giving guidance on equipment inspection requirements. Risk assessments should also be reviewed at intervals not exceeding two years or when there is a reported incident or a new work activity or arrangement takes place.

Ongoing inspections Employers have a responsibility to regularly inspect all equipment being used and inform their employees of the current status of a piece of equipment. So they need to have a system of identifying when an item is safe or unsafe to use.

Recording inspections All of these inspections need to be recorded to ensure that equipment is inspected at the correct intervals and that the resulting information is readily available.

On-going training Employers also have a duty to ensure employees understand how to indentify when a piece of equipment is safe or not and the potential hazards surrounding its use as well as how to report any faults they find.

Scafftag's knowledge, obtained from its years of experience, mean its Equip experts can give a business bespoke, equipment-specific advice about the standards that need to be adhered to and what systems can be put in place to ensure compliance.

This advice is backed up by an Equip performance pack which contains factsheets, posters, a case study and an inspection guide pocket memo.

A Scafftag Equip expert assesses the individual business' needs based on Scafftag's 20 years of experience, unrivalled equipment status product range and a database of thousands of bespoke designs. Scafftag then works with the business to deliver high visibility, coordinated systems that communicate with the company's workforce to improve safety and maximise efficiency.

For each of an employer's duties, Scafftag Equip can provide a solution. Risk assessments and ongoing inspections are supported by Scafftag's inspection books and Safetrak software. Safetrak is a computerised equipment management system that uses RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) technology and specially designed software. From handheld computers, operatives and inspectors can scan the Scafftag tagging system attached to the equipment, inspect it, update its status and instantly feed all of the relevant information back into the Safetrak database for everyone to see. Safetrak schedules inspections and provides reminders for them to be completed to all necessary parties.

Equipment status tags help to ensure that the latest inspections information is available at the point of use.

For equipment users this reduces the likelihood of assumptions being made that can lead to accidents and downtime. For inspectors, it helps to provide instant visual confirmation of what equipment needs to be inspected.

Safetrak also provides employers with a paperless solution to recording inspections as it keeps details of all inspections and allows extensive audit and management reporting functions.

Ongoing employee training can be provided via the use of Scafftag's posters, pocket memo guides and equip support services.

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