Reasonably practicable - Pallets and racking protection

[Rjsafety]

Just a quick (ok, long) question along the lines of reasonably practicable in regards to racking protection, in what reads below as an exam style question......

Within a building of 10,000 “locations” of racking space, with a high turn over of pallets, say 20,000 pallet movements a week there have are on average 5 times per month been instances where a pallet has nearly fallen or nearly been pushed through racking to the point it has fallen from height, or spilled its load (light components), with 4 instances of it happening where a load has fallen or spilled - in 6 months.

Would it be considered “reasonably practicable” to empty the racking out and pay to put in “backstops” on the racking.

Costs associated would be;
£60,000 for the equipment and installation
500 man hours (including machine use) to empty and refill racking (Plus operational downtime)

**caveats to this question:
1 injury (minor laceration) caused by a spilled load (less than 3 days off)
Approx. 252,000 man hours worked

Answers on a postcard???

[Rjsafety]

Just as an addition to the above:

FLT assessment is completed on all drivers
Licences are all in date
Racking in good condition
Well lit Areas with good lighting
FLT truck checks done daily - cameras on all trucks

[dave247]

I think that I would “prefer” to have it and going straight to this option isn’t wrong but do you think it’s too instinctive?
From a coaching perspective I would ask you, do you think not having these in place is causing the incidents? Have they been reported as near misses and if yes what were the causes accepted and documented on the report close out?

If this were to happen and you were to do an investigation what would you look at as part of the investigation and what would your “Root” and Underlying cause be?

It’s so easy to jump for the obvious but by doing so you may miss something, you may have prevented a pallet being pushed off but have you prevented the fatality from a truck hitting someone from say a driver with no licence, poor training, poor supervision, drug and alcohol problems... the list goes on.

Hope that helps.