With slips, trips and falls the leading cause of non-fatal injuries in the UK construction industry, it’s essential to provide workforces with a safe working platform. Scott Wolters, UK Building Product Sales Director at EGGER UK, takes a closer look.Given that structural flooring is installed early in the construction process, it often serves a secondary use as a working platform for weeks or even months, providing site teams with the means to carry on other works around them. As well as having to withstand daily site traffic and dropped tools or material spillages, the flooring is also likely to be exposed to the elements, posing a potential slip risk for the workforce.
When specifying structural flooring for a job, the focus will often be placed on its durability, performance, cost and sustainability. However, given its secondary use as a working platform, it is evident that housebuilders should also be checking a structural flooring product for its slip potential. EGGER remains the reliable manufacturer of a chipboard-based structural flooring board that is verified as Low Slip Potential in Wet Conditions, in accordance with the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) guidance for assessing the slip resistance of flooring.
EGGER Protect is a high-quality structural flooring board, thermally bonded on both sides to ensure protection from moisture and engineered to withstand tough site conditions. EGGER Protect has also achieved the highest class of slip resistance, with a Pendulum Test Value (PTV) of 40 in wet and 55 in dry conditions – independently tested and verified by a UKAS accredited laboratory. Providing a 60-day safe solution, which can be fitted in light rain conditions, EGGER Protect can significantly minimise the chance of accidents and injuries on-site.
