If a business owner is given “notice” of a potentially dangerous floor condition by a visitor, customer or employee, it is imperative that it be addressed promptly. Promptly to a “reasonable” person might mean no longer than 10-15 minutes.

Longer times are harder to excuse if an accident occurs after notice but before cleanup. If the business owner is not given notice of a potentially dangerous condition created between reasonable inspections, he would not necessarily be responsible if an accident occurred.

All notices of potentially dangerous conditions not specifically related to an obvious cleanup situation should be logged as to when and what action was taken, even if nothing was found and no action was taken. This log should be kept in a file for possible future reference.

Walk-off matting at every entrance to a building is an important part of keeping a reasonable standard of care. In high traffic areas, matting should be capable of absorbing large quantities of water during inclement weather.

Ideally, a pedestrian entering a building should be able to take four to five steps in any direction before leaving the mat and encountering regular flooring.

Size of matting selected for any building application is dependant on entrance architecture and space limitations. Highly absorbent floor matting can hold a gallon and a half of water per square yard. Additionally, 85 percent of all soil that enters a building comes in through entrances. Most of that soil can be prevented from entering a building through the use of a good matting system.

The use of matting will mean less money spent on recoating or replacing floors worn from soil abrasion and less money spent on removing soil from the facility.

Lighter weight matting is often laundered and exchanged regularly if it is rented. Otherwise, it may be power washed on site. Larger, more absorbent matting is permanent enough so that it is rarely moved. It must be regularly vacuumed and periodically extracted as part of its normal maintenance. Good matting will always pay for itself.

There exists the option to use matting only in inclement weather situations. This option does not allow the business owner to take advantage of abrasion reduction to floors and soil reduction in the facility. If this option is employed, it is imperative to have a person responsible to install needed matting at entrances at the first sign of moisture. If a visitor would fall at a wet entrance where no matting was available, it would not be defensible.

Available wet floor warning signs or cones are an integral part of entrance safety. These signs, when put to use on wet days, reduce slips and falls.

Signs should be employed only when needed and be put where they can easily be seen by people entering the building. In this way, visitors can be warned about the potential danger of encountering water on the floor or possible residual water on their shoes after leaving the carpeted area.

They may also be warned that they may still have water on their feet, even after walking on a carpet. Carpeting likely will not remove all water from shoe bottoms, thus leaving the possibility that slipping could still occur if flatter, shorter steps are not employed by the pedestrian immediately after leaving the carpeted area.

Water, whether on a heel or on a floor surface, has the same ability to cause slipping.

Often, floor maintenance must be accomplished while there are people other than maintenance personnel in the area. This is always the case in 24 hour retail stores where customers are present during floor maintenance operations. The same rules will apply that apply to normal late evening/early morning floor maintenance. That is, barricades and signs should be in place to keep people out of areas where coating and/or stripping operations are underway. Barricades are required because a wet floor sign will not adequately warn of the slip hazard of a floor wet with a stripper or a coating.

Where damp mopping or auto scrubbing operations are being conducted, signs without barricades are acceptable. In high traffic business, such as discount and food retail stores, minimal nightly floor maintenance should consist of cleaning the entire floor surface.

This procedure serves to clean accumulated dust, soil and contaminants from the floor, enhance floor appearance, and preserve the floor coating. This procedure can be done with a mop and bucket with or without the addition of a rotary floor machine, but is preferably done with an auto scrubber and an appropriately diluted cleaning solution and cleaning medium (pads or brushes).

Depending on the type of facility, the severity of floor traffic and soil should control the cleaning schedule. In other words, in contrast to the needs of heavy retail, a floor area in a building where few walk and which does not get contaminated can be dust mopped to remove surface dust and only cleaned as needed.

The safety of most commercial building floors, however, will benefit from regular cleaning. FSM

Source: JohnsonDiversey