How often should industrial doors be serviced?
Door servicing (or planned maintenance) is critical to ensuring operator safety and minimizing doorway downtime. In industries where doorways are relied on to maintain controlled environments, door servicing is essential to sustaining production, and ensuring business success.
So what does the law say about the frequency of door servicing?
Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 is called, “General duties of employers to employees.” Under this section, it states that it is the employer’s duty to “provide and maintain plant and systems of work that are, so far as is reasonably practical, safe and without risks to health”.
The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER) is an approved code of practice. Guidance 5 of this document gives the following advice on Frequency of maintenance, “Equipment should be checked frequently to ensure that safety-related features are functioning correctly.”
In addition, the document also states that, “The frequency of maintenance activities should take into account the:
- Intensity of use. (Frequency and maximum working limits).
- Operating environment (marine, outdoors).
- Variety of operations (Is the equipment performing the same task or does this change?)
- Risk to health & safety from malfunction or failure.”
In both these documents, industrial doors are not specifically mentioned. They are, however, considered to be machinery in the workplace and should therefore comply with the same standards and regulations.
The Door and Hardware federation (or DHF) have complied a useful document entitled, “The Code of Practice for the Safety of Industrial Doors”
Part 3, section 2.4 of this document advises us that the law does not specify a particular maintenance period.
The code states, “Manufacturer’s operation and maintenance manuals are significant in this regard and should be the first point of reference when assessing the maintenance requirements of a system in use.”
In summary, although the law states that machinery, including industrial doors, should be serviced, it does not specify a particular maintenance time period.
It is a generally accepted minimum industry standard for industrial doors to be serviced at least once every 12-months. However, as recommended by in The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations, there are scenarios in which more frequent servicing is required, including high usage doorways and doors installed in corrosive or otherwise challenging environments.
It is recommended to work with your doorway provider to obtain an assessment of your doorways to ensure that they are being serviced correctly for your needs.
Need help getting a doorway assessment? Contact the team here.
Learn more about servicing and browse some customer case studies here.