Eliminating the risk
August 1st 2006

Manual handling injuries represent a serious threat to employees' health and employers' profits. Bradshaw looks at how you can help eliminate the risk using electric vehicles.

More than a third of over three day injuries reported each year are caused by manual handling. The most recent survey of self-reported workrelated illness estimated that in 2001/02, 1.1 million people in Great Britain suffered from musculoskeletal disorders caused or made worse by their current or past work.

An estimated 12.3 million working days were lost to these work-related musculoskeletal disorders and on average each sufferer took about 20 days off in that 12-month period.

Manual handling injuries can occur wherever people are at work. Heavy manual labour, awkward postures, manual materials handling, and previous or existing injury are all risk factors implicated in the development of musculoskeletal disorders.

The Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992, as amended in 2002, apply to a wide range of manual handling activities and the load may be either inanimate or animate. All employers, managers, safety representatives and employees should be looking at methods of reducing the risk of injury from manual handling.

Automated alternative The Regulations require employers to avoid the need for hazardous manual handling, assess the risk of any hazardous manual handling that cannot be avoided and reduce the risk of hazardous manual handling. It is also suggested that automation – using mechanisation and handling aids – is considered as an alternative to manual handling tasks.

Avoiding the need for hazardous manual handling led hose-manufacturer, James Dawson, to introduce an electric tow vehicle to reduce the risk of injury to its employees. The vehicle, from Bradshaw Electric Vehicles, was brought in to help move heavy waste from individual workstations.

Adrian Wood, Health and Safety Officer for James Dawson, explains: "Previously, the waste was collected from each workstation by manually emptying bins into a hand barrow and then emptying this into a skip.

The waste is often awkward to handle as well as being heavy, and this posed manual handling issues.

"We purchased a customised tow tractor Model T1 from Bradshaw which included a fifth wheel style coupling and purpose built low load wheelie bin trailer. This gave excellent manoeuvrability in the narrow gangways within the plant."

Each workstation has been supplied with a 360-litre wheelie bin. The vehicle operator simply replaces the full bin with an empty one and then tows the full bin to a central site where it is sorted and loaded into the compactor. The compactor is fitted with a bin lift, also taking away the manual handling risk.

Bradshaw's T1 tow tractor is capable of towing up to 1500kg and is fitted with a 5mph speed limiter, an audible reverse warning and a flashing beacon to ensure it can operate safely in warehouse and manufacturing environments.

One of the most important considerations when replacing a manual handling task with an automated process, such as the introduction of an electronic tow truck, is that operatives are properly trained in its use. Bradshaw offers free driver familiarisation with all its vehicles.

Drew Bradshaw, Managing Director of Bradshaw Electric Vehicles, says: "We provide training on delivery of all our vehicles for all the employees that will be using the vehicle. This includes the safe use of the vehicle in internal environments, such as industrial plants, where the area is often shared with pedestrians."

And it's not just in internal environments that the use of an electric vehicle has replaced a manual handling task. The vehicles are frequently used on college campuses, hospital sites, airports and railway stations.

Transport across site Kettering General Hospital NHS Trust uses a range of electric vehicles from Bradshaw across a number of departments and functions – including the transport of food trolleys, produce and waste. They recently bought a pedestrian controlled vehicle – the PCM 500 – to meet the increasing demand for safer ways to transport goods across the site and in anticipation of the opening of their new treatment centre this summer.

Again, training is the key to ensuring the vehicle is used safely. Neville Morrison, Catering Manager for the Trust, says: "We are currently carrying out training on the vehicle for the 50 porters and 10 members of the catering department who will use the vehicle on a daily basis."

The vehicles used on the hospital site eliminate the need for operatives to pull heavy trolleys of food and wheelie bins – again, reducing the risk of musculoskeletal disorders.

Electric vehicles allow employers to remove the manual handling risks involved in the transport of heavy, awkward and bulky loads across a wide variety of sites.

Bradshaw's vehicles can be found at warehouses, hospitals, industrial plants, airports, railways, golf courses and many other locations where a small, efficient vehicle is required to move loads or people.

And as Bradshaw Electric Vehicles designs and manufactures its own vehicles at its UK plant, it is able to offer customised vehicles to suit the exact requirements of the customer.

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