Legislative Decree 81: the hidden benefits of proper implementation

Legislative Decree 81: the hidden benefits of proper implementation

Marco Chiarini, General Manager of STOMMPY Srl "By adopting a risk assessment plan in the handling of forklifts in the company, a significant economic benefit can be achieved."

Legislative Decree 81 of April 9, 2008 imposes a number of obligations on employers regarding employee safety. The objective? To carry out an accurate and comprehensive analysis, identify protective measures and draw up the DVR (Risk Assessment Document) as the final and mandatory document for every company. In detail, the report is aimed at presenting an assessment of all the risks to which employees are subject, indicating the procedures to be followed in case of danger and planning a program of interventions aimed at reducing the risk index in the different areas within industrial plants, making explicit the prevention measures and protective devices deemed appropriate to improve, over time, the level of safety.

We talk about this with Marco Chiarini, general manager of STOMMPY Srl - Italy's leading manufacturer of shock protection systems for industrial use:

"Legislative Decree 81 has made it possible to update and integrate, based on the experience gained over the years, the contents of the now repealed Legislative Decree 626/94 and all previous regulations on the subject. Compliance with the requirements constitutes not only an ethical and moral but also a legal obligation. Failure to comply entails, in fact, important consequences both, administratively and criminally, which provide for a penalty of €2,500 to €6,400 or arrest up to 8 months."

The legal obligations introduced in recent years to regulate the subject are sometimes interpreted more as bureaucratic requirements than as effective actions to really increase safety levels in the company...

"Concretely adopting a pro-safety plan ensures significant positive effects on multiple process management parameters, as well as non-negligible economic benefits. To prove it, STOMMPY Srl, which has always been a promoter of safety in the industrial sphere, conducted research on a sample of forty Customers, over a period of three years, where the risk assessment plan included, among other measures, the installation of shock protections in the goods handling areas.

The companies under study operate in different commodity sectors (food, pharmaceutical, automotive and logistics) with an integrated value chain from production, to logistics."

What does the safety campaign you have designed, the Risk Assessment in the Handling of Goods Handling Carts, consist of?

"This is aproject that mainly involved the figure of the RSPP, the head of the company's prevention and protection service, but attention was also given to owners, facility managers and maintenance managers.

In the risk assessment process, we analyzed with customers the vehicle routes, focusing on the following parameters:

• The spaces available for trolley maneuvering;
• the speed of travel;
• The weights and encumbrances of the loads carried;
• The sharing of trolley routes with moving pedestrians;
• The adjacency of pathways to unprotected workstations;
• The economic and strategic significance of infrastructure such as: machinery, electrical panels, shelving, doors or walls present in the vicinity of routes, for the proper conduct of business processes.

The surveys revealed how the existing operational state was generating potential hazards to both personnel and facilities at multiple points."

What were the measures you suggested to implement?

"In order toreduce and/or eliminate possible collisions, we suggested, where possible, expanding the maneuvering area for trucks in favor of greater visibility at intersections. We have, in addition, suggested changing the layout of racking and conveyor belts, demarcating freight parking areas and pedestrian paths. In most cases, in the absence of space, action was taken by installing impact protection systems STOMMPY, in order to preserve the existing infrastructure and protect workers at the same time." "It is essential," Marco Chiarini further emphasizes, "that the impact protection is suitable for the work environment where it will be installed, defined through the preliminary calculation of the impact energy that the truck can generate. From this result, one can select the impact protection capable of containing it and dissipating it into the floor without damaging it, otherwise in addition to generating unforeseen costs to the client, the resistance of the impact protection to subsequent impacts could not be guaranteed."

At the end of the three years of testing, data collected from the sample involved in the survey revealed positive results, categorized under the following headings:

Reduction in infrastructure repair expenses due to collisions with carts (walls and columns; door jambs and pads; shelves and racking uprights; flooring when conventional impact protection systems with dowel fasteners are present; replacement of Impact Protectors with standard dowel fasteners when irreparable)

• 72% of Clients reported a total elimination of these expenses
• 28% of Clients experienced a significant reduction in these expenses
• no Companies experienced an increase in expenses;

Increased operational efficiency

• 65% of Customers reported a noticeable decrease in forklift driver maneuvering time;
• 35% of Customers reported no improvement in maneuvering time;
• no Company reported an increase in maneuvering time;

Savings on the INAIL premium (Form OT24) due to the reduction of the company risk coefficient:  

• 76% of Clients achieved a saving on the INAIL premium as a result of the reduction in the company's risk coefficient;
• 24% of Customers did not achieve any savings on INAIL premium, due to causes unrelated to the application of the risk assessment plan in the handling of forklifts in the company;
• no Company obtained an increase in INAIL premium as a result of the implementation of the risk assessment plan in forklift handling in the company;

Reduction of injuries to people caused by the collision of trucks against infrastructure and/or people

• 94% of Clients reported a complete elimination of it
• 6% of Clients experienced at least one injury
• no Client reported an increase in injuries

"Weare very pleased with the results of the research," comments Marco Chiarini "Sharing the data with our Clients, has allowed us to raise the level of awareness regarding the concrete benefits of adopting Shock Protection Systems. Our goal is, in fact, to stimulate more and more Companies to take the same path." and concludes "If safety regulations are consciously dropped within company procedures, the results, data in hand, are real, and contribute to concrete savings and greater efficiency."