FLTs and the importance of doing things safely

Don’t get me wrong – as tools, FLTs are incredibly useful and so many process would grind to a halt without the means to manage and move loads in tight spaces, and attempting to do anything similar by hand would be impossible. But just like gravity, it’s that power – that potential energy – that poses a risk.

Two things jump out from all the cases I’ve seen over the years:

1.      Experience and expertise can be as dangerous as not knowing what you are doing

Many of the accidents I’ve seen haven’t involved new to the job, first day employees who were booked on training but not yet trained. Instead, they have involved highly experienced, highly trained, skilled operators – quite often supervisors who’ve just hopped on to lend a hand or colleagues well used to FLTs who miss a beat and stand where they know they shouldn’t with disastrous consequences.

Why? You’d probably file it under complacency – I’d put it somewhere between confidence and excessive comfort, where the operators are so used to the positives of FLTs and so familiar with their operation that the downsides seem almost too remote to concern them. Events that follow tend to prove otherwise.

2.      Investigations find problems

Many of the accidents I’ve seen have obvious causes – someone driving too fast, a known maintenance shortcoming etc. Whilst these tend to start out as the central concern, more often than not HSE involvement will uncover a raft of issues, some related, some less so. For instance, a poorly driven FLT leading to a pedestrian collision might first lead to the obvious conclusion (the driver was going too fast and should have seen them) but then broaden into consideration of whether the pedestrian should have been there at all – and that leads on to segregation, established practices, training and so on. On other days, I’ve seen HSE walk away satisfied only to observe something else on site that gives rise to concern – the classic being the employee on the roof as HSE are just about to get into their care and drive away.

In practice, the only way to avoid this is to do everything right in the first place. Easier said than done.

More often than not, in the real world, it means internal investigations should keep the net wider and not rush to simple, convenient conclusions. Find the problems not just a problem, and fix them all.

And, if be aware that investigations might follow. Get good advice early and ensure that a simple issue doesn’t spiral into a catalogue of failures.