Safety violations can be extraordinarily costly, so their presence at a startup can be devastating. After all, compensation payouts and lawsuits are rarely cheap! You need to do everything you can to reduce the risk of this sort of thing happening. And there are few workplaces where this can be more difficult than in a factory.
There are several obvious steps you need to take when it comes to running a factory in a safe manner. I’m not going to list the need for employees to wear proper safety gear – you surely already know the importance of this! But there are plenty of areas of safety that many factory owners don’t give quite the same amount of consideration. This is because, even when ignored, the dangers tend not to manifest for quite some time. They’re not as obvious as the danger of not using safety equipment.
Here are some of the features you need to be more focus on in your factory.
Adequate lighting
There really shouldn’t be any area of your factory that can’t be well-lit. Your employees need to be able to see everything they’re working on in great detail, so dim lighting simply isn’t going to cut it. There are, of course, going to be some nooks and crannies that the overhead or even the side lighting won’t be able to reach properly. This is why you should consider having torches around that your workers can easily reach.
Proper ventilation
Your average factory is going to have a lot of unfriendly particles flying through the air. This can create respiratory problems if your factory isn’t built correctly. Sure, you can get masks that cover employees’ mouths and help filter out the worst of it. But you should really be ensuring that this sort of stuff is actually removed from the building as efficiently as possible. And that means you need a powerful ventilation system. Ventilation will also help keep the air clear of dust, as well as prevent overheating problems.
Restricted access
You also need to think about the safety of the people outside your facility. If an unauthorized person gains access to the building, they can put themselves, as well as your employees, in a lot of danger. That’s why you need to invest in good fencing around your area of business. You may even need to look into a manned gate of some kind. Commercial fence contractors can help you with this sort of task. Boost safety further by requiring employees and guests to wear cards or tags that identify them as such when on-site.
Fire drills
Factories often have slightly more complex routes to fire exits that other workplaces. It’s essential that everyone gets the proper exit procedure “drilled” into the memory! Of course, fire drills themselves can have safety implications if they’re not done properly. Someone being taken by surprise when an alarm suddenly goes off might find themselves getting injured that way. So while you may want to recreate the “sudden” nature of an actual fire, you might want to alert people to the fact that a fire drill will be taking place at a particular time.