Also online at: www.dijonline.co.uk 30 THE door industry journal summer 2022 Industry News Fallback protection-related questions are the most frequently received enquiry to the dhf technical team. Enquirers most commonly want to know: when did the requirement to have a safety brake come into force? Nick Perkins, dhf Senior Training & Compliance Officer, clarifies the [not-so-simple] answer. The short answer is that there is not, and never has been, a specific legal requirement to have a safety brake on a vertically acting door - but it really is not that simple. Fall-back incidents are quite commonly dramatic and violent in nature. Thankfully, most are near misses, but where a person is under the door at the time, a fatality is the most likely outcome. There is a clear requirement to protect against potentially fatal fall-back incidents, but the solution is not always a safety brake. In terms of when this level of protection became a legal requirement, it is not possible to define a date; there has always been a need to prevent such potentially devastating incidents. The following provides a useful timeline for various pieces of criminal health and safety legislation and standards that have an impact on this question. 1974 - Health and Safety at Work Act This very wide-scope legislation is the most commonly used for UK death and injury fall-back incident prosecutions. There are similar pieces of legislation in Northern Ireland (Health and Safety at Work Order 1978) and the Republic of Ireland (Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005). These cover a general requirement to ensure safety at work, whilst working, and as a result of work. They place a criminal responsibility on manufacturing, installation, maintenance and owner/manager activities. The test for compliance uses the term ‘reasonably practicable’ to define how safe things need to be. Serial industrial door and perimeter gate industry prosecutions reveal that in most cases, the prosecuting authority and the courts have deemed it reasonable and practicable to use a product-specific standard where one exists. 1992 - Workplace (Health Safety & Welfare) Regulations This GB workplace safety legislation places criminal responsibility on owners and managers to ensure that workplaces are safe. There are similar pieces of legislation in force in Northern Ireland (Workplace (Health Safety & Welfare) Regulations (NI) 1993) and the Republic of Ireland (Safety, Health and Welfare at Work (General Applications) Act 2007). The Regulations specifically require that vertically acting doors are prevented from falling back. 1995 – Machinery Directive compliance became mandatory The UK Supply of Machinery (Safety) Regulations came into force implementing the EU Machinery Directive; all manufacturers of machinery had to comply. The Regulations require that the manufacturer must comply with the essential health and safety requirements set out in Annex 1 which include a requirement to prevent break up during operation (1.3.2), and control any risk of uncontrolled movement (1.3.9). There is no specific mention of a safety brake or 300mm (see below); instead, the regulations rely on what is termed state-of-the-art. This is where standards come in; product-specific standards describe what compliance looks like in detail for each product group covered by the Regulations. In this way, both a chainsaw and a powered door have to comply, but at hugely differing levels of personal safety for the user based on their intended use. In 1995 there were no British or European standards for industrial and garage doors, hence there was no clear state-of-the-art to achieve. This did not mean that it was OK to kill a person with a falling door however; on the contrary, assessing risk and providing safety for people was in 1995, and still is, central to the Regulations. 2000 – A standard covering fall-back protection was published EN 12604 was published in the UK and across the EU. It explained what fall-back protection meant and how it should be achieved on all vertically acting industrial & garage doors. There is no mention of a safety brake specifically, but it does require that the springs, cables, chains and gears that hold a door open are considered to be vulnerable (because they wear out) and that they need to be protected such that the door will not drop more than 300mm and be prevented from further use when one of these vulnerable components suffers a failure. According to the standard, protection can be achieved with a device or by utilising an inherently safe system design. By implication, this created state-of-the-art industrial and garage door fall-back protection for the first time. 2001 – A standard covering powered industrial and garage door safety was published EN 12453 was published in the UK and across the EU. It explained how to make powered industrial and garage doors safe. For structural integrity and fall-back protection, the standard refers the user to EN 12604. By implication, this created a state-of-the-art for powered industrial and garage door safety for the first time. Fallback Protection on Vertically Operating Doors
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