Folding Dining Tables - Annual Inspection/Maintenance service

[Chris1bev]

Morning All

I was made aware yesterday that our folding dining tables we use in our primary school should have an annual maintenance inspection, hands up, I wasn't aware nor gave it a thought. My question is..... is this something we can do in-house or does it need to be an approved company?

Cheers
Chris

[WillPool]

Hi Chris1bav, welcome to the forums

A lot will depend on what your insurers deem acceptable, an example may be that they would want two types of inspection:

1. Periodic (maybe monthly) 'in-house inspection' - this would look at the state of the table, is it clean, functional and working as should?

2. Annual Inspection perhaps by the insurer that would check your checks and conduct a 'thorough inspection' of functionality and weight bearing.

Also, you should consider taking any broken tables out of service (and fixed/repaired as required)

The above may sound a little over the top but speak with your insurer, they may just ask for a function check weekly/monthly

Hope this helps

Will

[Chris1bev]

Hi Will and thanks for the warm welcome!!

I've been here for 6 years and our insurers have never asked to see any form of documentation on the tables, that said, that's not to say they won't in the future.

Without question, I will start carrying out in-house inspections, any broken tables to date have been removed and repaired anyway.

Thanks for your reply, truly appreciated.

[stephen1974]

All equipment should be inspected on a regular basis. Tables and chairs included, even if they are not fold up ones. - Says the man who had to regularly inspect 2000 chairs...

Take a school, how many kids lean their chairs back on two legs? weakens the legs, next thing, they snap. A simple in house inspection is sufficient.

[Messy]

Does this mean all the chairs and tables need to be given a unique reference code to enable precise records to be kept?

[stephen1974]

Good point. Our chairs were numbered but there were a lot of them, Fixed seating can just use a plan I guess or even just use a block number However, if there is a small number of tables and chairs to inspect and you can do them all in one hit, you probably wouldnt need unique identifiers.

If its in a class room and you dont move stuff between rooms, I guess you can just say classroom A was inspected.

Or, you can be really annoying and get a QR code places on everything and make people check them by scanning. That way you know each one has at least been given a 1 second glance.