Avoiding a slip-up when choosing safety flooring

John Mellor, market manager for safety flooring at UK manufacturer, Polyflor, examines the important role of safety flooring in healthcare premises, and highlights some of the key things to look for when specifying such flooring.

Effective healthcare design is about the creation of safe and clean surroundings for patients, staff, and visitors alike. The operational requirements of a hospital environment can be inherently complex, and floor finishes are required to meet high functional, aesthetic, and durability standards, with different areas of healthcare buildings requiring different levels of flooring performance and slip resistance characteristics. 

Offering a high level of sustainable slip resistance, safety flooring is typically specified in public and staff areas where there is a risk of spillage or wetness, and is used to protect against an unsafe slip hazard. Making a good choice of slipresistant flooring can be challenge for specifiers, partly because, with some products now entering the market, slipresistant characteristics are promoted that are based solely on transient, ex-factory R ratings derived from ‘the ramp test’, which are not sustainable. It is therefore useful to remind those specifying flooring in the healthcare sector of the need to undertake an early risk assessment to determine whether safety flooring will be required, and to then provide information on relevant industry standards and the guidelines offered by the UK Slip Group (UKSRG) and the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to which your chosen flooring manufacturer should adhere. These determine what products can legitimately be called a ‘safety floor’, and indeed will provide sustainable slip resistance in wet conditions.