Health & Safety – Part three – Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

For the third in our series of blogs on Health & Safety, we are focusing on Personal Protective Equipment, commonly known as PPE.

PPE includes clothing, garments or equipment that is designed to protect an employee’s body from serious workplace injuries or infection. Due to the nature of our work, each of our field staff is equipped with a variety of PPE as soon as they join Swiftclean.

As a responsible employer, we are aware that the PPE we supply our teams must be suitable for the conditions of the job they are to carry out and offers the right level of protection.

Employees must be trained to use their PPE correctly and to understand the importance of using it. It’s also critical that any PPE fits the employee as they are far less likely to wear it if it is uncomfortable or interferes with the job being done. Also, if it doesn’t fit correctly, for example a face fit mask, then it is unlikely to protect as required.

The use of some PPE requires training for example, harnesses (harness inspection training) and certain types of masks (face fit training). We keep a training schedule for each of our employees as each course can be valid for a different amount of time so it’s important to keep a record for when training becomes out of date.

In general, the PPE we supply to our teams can consist of:

Hi-vis jacket, hard hat, ear protectors (buds and defenders), boots, FFPI 1,2 and 3 masks, face fit masks, 1 and 2-point harnesses, eye protectors, gloves, bump caps and a bag to keep everything together.

Some jobs require more specialised PPE than others, for example, respiratory kits when working with hazardous substances such as gases, solvents, powered chemicals, mists and sprays or entering a confined space.

It’s vital that if we expect our staff to carry out work that can be challenging, that we keep them as safe from harm as possible.