Winter and Cold Weather Facility Preparation

Webinar Introduction

Welcome to our winter cold weather facility safety webinar. Today we will be led by Paul Schneeberger. Paul is a product manager at Brady who guides Brady's global signage and materials portfolio, delivering efficient solutions for hazard prevention, compliance, and operations. So, he is the man for the job to explain everything we need to know about winter and cold weather facility safety today. With that said, please feel free to drop in any questions into the chat or into the question bar, and we will answer all those at the end of the webinar. And Paul, take it away.

All right, thanks Will for the introduction. Just to follow up a little bit on that, I've been working in the safety industry here with Brady for 12 years. I've managed a variety of product lines. I currently manage our signs and labels. But I'll tell you the one thing that I'm passionate about is that people should be able to show up at work, feel safe, and be able to go home to their families, right? And I'm hoping what you get out of this is some other one to two things that you're able to walk away with that you maybe didn't think of when it came to winter facility preparation or cold weather situations, right? I mean, I'm assuming everybody's going to be like, "Oh, they might talk about how we keep our parking lots maintained." And we will do that. But I'm hoping that just throughout this that you pick up on a couple things that are different for you and maybe you didn't think of, and that allows you to implement that in your facility, your life, anything that helps you to make it more safe as we approach the winter colder temperatures that are out there.

Understanding Winter Risks & The Hierarchy of Controls

So when we talk about winter ready and the essential facility safety, we're trying to mitigate the risks associated with this winter weather, ensuring a safe environment for all people, right? We're talking employees, we're talking visitors, we're talking contractors. Your employees are likely showing up to that building every day. They're going to be quite familiar with it. Visitors, they're not going to be as familiar, and contractors might be showing up for a week at a time. And all of those people, right, employees might know where all the entrance and exits are, but visitors might not, contractors may not. So we're going to just take a look at some of the things in our building, around our building, where we want to make sure that it's a safe environment. I will try and cover as much as I can from all environments, right, not only the environments that get three feet of snow, but maybe even the environment that just gets a one-off snow and do they have a plan in place to do it right. Some areas don't get as much snow and some just get cold, and we'll talk a little bit about that as well. So, the areas we're going to focus on, we're going to talk first about managing our parking lots, our walkways, and then ice that might come with those in those areas. We'll talk about preventing slips, trips, and falls, and we'll make sure that we ensure clear and accessible evacuation routes. You'll see some of the products we might talk about signage. You got a picture there of kind of a cleared parking lot, but that's kind of what we're going to focus on from an agenda perspective.

Now, one of my favorite things that I've learned over these past 12 years is there's this hierarchy of controls, right? And this to me is just always a great way of approaching any safety problem; it helps you just kind of walk through this. So if we just say let's talk about snow, right? So the way I like to look at this is can we eliminate snow? Well, not really. It's going to fall. It's going to come. You can kind of physically remove the hazard, but you might not be able to remove it immediately, right? You could have your lot plowed and that would physically remove the hazard. But that's one thing that you'll definitely need to have a plan for. But if you kind of think of it through, can we substitute it? Nope, we're not going to be able to replace the hazard. It's going to be there. Can we isolate people from the hazard? Well, kind of, yeah. We can make sure we clear certain paths that are there. Can we change the way people work? Well, maybe we're going to talk about a system in which we're closing the building for the day, right? And how do we notify and make sure everybody is aware of that? And/or can we protect the worker with personal protective? Again, we're going to talk about that as well when it comes to snow and how we approach that. So, I will probably reference back to this as we kind of go through this webinar in terms of the hierarchy of controls and how we can approach specific problems if we look at it from this perspective.

Hazard Area 1: Parking Lots and Walkways

So, hazard area one is our parking lots and walkways, right? And so, a lot of organizations will likely sign a contract with somebody to clear their lots, right? And maybe we're going to talk maybe ice. We're going to put rock salt down to melt ice. But our challenge really is snow accumulation and black ice are the primary causes of injury during winter commuting and entry and exit from the building, right? So people slip, trip and fall in your parking lot and that becomes an incident. People get hurt, people have to go to the doctor, people have lost time. And so really making sure that these areas are properly planned for is really important. When we talk about plowing and shoveling, we need to talk about our primary access routes, our main entrances and designated handicap spaces first, making sure that those areas are specifically clear. But it's one thing to say, "Oh, we're going to hire a company to plow and shovel our parking lot," but there's a lot of details that kind of go into that, which I want to make sure that, as a safety professional or if you're managing the situation, you make sure you ask these questions and you make sure you get answers, right? What time do they come? If the building opens up at six o'clock and there's employees starting to show up at six o'clock at the building and they're scheduled to come between 7:00 and 8:00, that's not super helpful when we have an overnight snow. So, we want to make sure that they're aware of the building operations that we have and what time we expect them to be there so that the lot can be clear as best as it possibly can when employees are starting to show up. Do they come multiple times? How often do they come? Those are other things to think about, right? When do we put down rock salt? Can we do that in preparation of a snowstorm? So from the plowing and shoveling, it's great to go hire somebody, but if you don't have that open line of communication with them, you won't be able to effectively make it work for your employees and your work site.

Okay, ice management, again, same thing, right? Who's doing it? Assuming you're getting a company to do our parking lot, ideally you want to apply it before the freezing temperatures, and then after the lot's been cleared to kind of make sure that we're melting any ice, right? And then ramps or shaded areas, those are going to accumulate ice faster and are going to be harder to clear, so we would want to pay special attention to that. When it comes to walkways and shoveling, is there a designated person that does that during the day? When, you know, maybe we have this happen first thing in the morning, but are there designated employees who do that job? Make sure that they're aware of their responsibility and at what times and in what situations should they be clearing those paths.

Communication, right, email, internal messaging, notifying staff about severe weather. And this isn't just about snow, right? This could be about freezing temperatures. It could be about high winds. It could be about tornadoes, hurricanes, anything that you could think of. And obviously, that doesn't necessarily happen typically in the winter, but I'm just kind of broadening the message over just winter communication. But some other things to think about when you think about communication, right, does everybody have access to email? Does everybody have access to the internal messaging that you think that they have? So it's really making sure that everybody in your organization can get that message out. Maybe it's a text message on a phone. So just making sure that there is a communication system there. And then is signage present in spots where snow or ice buildup is most prevalent? And really what you want to make sure as we're talking about this is it's towards the entry of the building and towards the exiting of the building, right? So as employees are exiting the building, they're aware that there could be icy conditions in the parking lot and they should be careful as they enter the parking lot, right? Maybe they're driving in, right, some sign that makes them aware that those icy conditions may be present. So that's one way of communicating it, right, kind of an administrative control, giving people that example.

Employee Responsibilities & Car Safety Kits

But the one thing I want to note, the employer can do everything, right? You as a safety professional can do everything possible to make the facility safe, the parking lot safe, the inside safe, but employees also do have a responsibility. And so you should really think about how you do that communication with employees and what some of their responsibilities might be in making this happen, right? Because ultimately from an employer's perspective, there'll ultimately be times when the plow company didn't show up or we got so much snow that they just couldn't keep up. And this is where employees having some education in this topic will help them to make sure that they help complete the mission of everybody being able to go home safe. And so, first thing, footwear, right? Let's make sure that we're wearing appropriate footwear while we're walking to and from our cars in the parking lot or when we're working outside, right? You really shouldn't be wearing your dress shoes all day from your car to your parking lot. Get a nice pair of boots that you keep in your car that you're able to put on and bring them into the office, change your shoes. It'll just make things simpler and will give you appropriate footwear outside for icy or snowy conditions.

Walk with a waddle, right? Some people have heard the "walk like a penguin," right? So, shorten your stride, maintain balance when crossing potentially icy patches, right? So, be deliberate about it. It's not a rush to get in, it's not a rush to get out. But encourage the employees to walk deliberately using designated routes, right? Main paths, cleared sidewalks and paths, right? There may be a shortcut, but that may not have been plowed, that may not have been shoveled. Ideally, there's designated routes. And again, employers can help by communicating the designated routes that they want people to enter and exit the building from. And then reporting, right, if something happens or there's an area that's been not treated or a snow buildup somewhere, we should immediately report that to the facility management so that it can get taken care of by the appropriate people. I mean, in general, from an employee responsibility, assuming people are coming by car, it's important to have kind of a go-to winter kit in your car that maybe you always have a hat, you always have gloves, you always have a winter jacket, right? That's just best practice. If all of a sudden you get stuck on a road because there was an accident and now you're outside for two hours, it's appropriate for you to be able to have the right things in your car. And that kind of works as you show up at your office, you can use those things to get into the office depending on your walk. So, it's really making sure that you're prepared for some time outside because you don't really know what's going to happen throughout the course of that workday.

Hazard Area 2: Preventing Slips, Trips, and Falls Indoors

Okay, the second hazard area that we're going to talk about is indoors, right? And so what we're trying to do here is prevent slips, trips, and falls indoors because what happens is as people enter the building, they're tracking in snow and ice, especially near the entrances and exits of the building. And so when we talk about facility responsibility, there should be some kind of matting, high quality scrapers and some matting at all exterior entrances to capture the moisture, right? If you think about it, you all of a sudden come in with your boots and your boots get packed with snow and then as you're walking to your office or your desk, all of a sudden you're tracking in snow, water, and now you're making a slippery surface. So that's really one thing to think about is how do we try and get all that snow and ice off somebody right at that entrance or exit door. But again, a lot of companies will have a contract with somebody that will come in and service their mats, maybe on a weekly basis, maybe on a monthly basis, or maybe it's on a basis that we need to increase it in the wintertime and we don't need to have it serviced so much in the summertime, right? So making sure that you have a plan in place with your organization that you know how is this serviced, how is this maintained, how is it vacuumed, how is it changed out? And so those are things that you want to think about as a safety leader or as a building leader.

Wet floor signage, right? So how do we have that marked at the entrance and exit that there may be wet floor conditions, especially when we have a snowfall or rain or anything like that where water may get tracked into the building, right? So, a simple wet floor cone, a sign on a stand that says, "Wet floor conditions may be present," so that it just becomes aware for the employee that's coming into the building that, "Wow, I should make sure I'm careful. I don't want to slip here inside the building after I get in there." And then any spills, right? So, this is just generally, right? You can think of a spill being anything, right? Somebody's coming into the office, they're carrying a bunch of stuff and they spill their coffee, right? How do we make sure that we get that cleaned up immediately regardless of size? Tracking all kinds of snow and water in, you kind of think of as a spill. It's not really a spill, but that's creating a hazardous condition.

And then from an employee action, encourage your employees to pause at the entrance mats. The entrance mats are there not for you to just walk over, but take a minute, stop, stomp your feet a little bit, get all the snow out of your boots before you travel further into the office or the warehouse environment. And if you're carrying stuff, right? Sometimes people need to carry stuff in to work and all of a sudden now we're doing it in icy conditions or snowy conditions and visibility is restricted, right? So try and be careful about that, right? Think twice about how much you could carry when there's snow and ice present as opposed to when maybe there isn't snow or ice present. It poses more challenges in the winter environment than it maybe does in the summer or really nice weather.

Hazard Area 3: Safe Evacuation Routes

So, the third area that we're going to talk about, so we talked about the parking lots, we talked about indoors, and the third area is going to be evacuation routes. So, this is one of those areas that sometimes gets forgotten in this whole thing because we're worried about our parking lot. We're worried about the snow and ice that comes into our building. But if we were to have an evacuation, everybody goes and finds that nearest door and if there was a big snowstorm in the past week, that door may be blocked, right, because it could have had a buildup of snow and ice. The doors maybe have not been opened in three months because it's February and nobody's been using it. But we really should have a plan around evacuation routes and how those are going to be cleared from snow and ice as well, right? You may go sign that contract with that company that's going to shovel your main sidewalks and shovel your main pathways and your main parking lot. But what about those employees that work in the corner office where their exit door is an emergency or a fire is the door right outside that leads to the back entrance? And all of a sudden, it's like, "Well, we haven't plowed that," or, "We haven't made a path from the grass," and now all of a sudden we're having an exit and we're trucking through snow and everything else. And what happens? All of a sudden people are getting wet, right? Now their feet are full of snow because they're trying to exit the building, but there was no path that was made. So that's just one thing to think about, right? All of our exit doors should really get cleared. They should get opened and tested on a frequent basis to make sure that we have a path everywhere.

So that's our exit doors, that's our exterior paths, right? Every building should have a gathering point where every employee should meet when we do have an evacuation, let's say a fire or carbon monoxide alarm or something like that where everybody needs to exit the building. We should make sure that area is cleared and deiced too, right? Some facilities might have that area be in the grass. Well, I'm not sure many people have plans to plow that grass. So maybe in the winter we need to have a discussion around a backup site for that muster area that we know is going to be cleaned frequently so if there is a hazard we're in a safe spot. And then, yeah, equipment access too, right? So this is the other thing to think about if you have fire hydrants on your property, we should make sure that those get cleared, right? And I'm not sure that's going to be the company that is servicing your lot. It may be an internal employee that's going to make sure that that's their job that they need to do frequently, right? And it's no different than any other things in your facility, right, fire extinguishers, eyewashes. We want to make sure that we have space around those so that we can get easy access to it. And that's just similar with a fire hydrant, right? We want to make sure that exterior shut-off valves, sprinkler connections, any important electrical setups outside, we want to make sure that we have access to any of those building, any of those things in case there's an emergency that takes place for our fire department, our police or our first responders so that they're able to get access to that. So that's just a hopefully maybe that one's like a little bit of a different one that you want to make sure that you think of.

Snow Shoveling Safety & Winter Evacuation Strategy

So snow removal, right, this is one of the big things that we find is snow removal. And we hear stories about this in the news frequently about people having heart attacks, people having things happen where they're doing strenuous physical exercise that maybe they haven't done in a while and they're trying to shovel snow, and then we get heart attacks, back injuries from overexertion. So, I suggest you have designated employees who are accomplishing maybe these tasks throughout the day. Let's say it's the snow removal by an emergency exit door or snow removal during the day after the main snow removal company came. We should go over shoveling safety with those employees, right? Warm up or stretch for a few minutes before you start. Push, don't lift. If you do lift it, make sure you're using your knees and your legs, not all your arms and your back. And then take breaks. Shovel for 20 minutes, rest for five, get a drink of water, do that, right? And even snowblowers, right, never clear a jam with your hands, right? If you're going to be using a snowblower, make sure the machine's completely off. If it's battery operated, remove the battery before you start servicing it. Refuel before starting your snow clearing, not after the engine's been running for a while. And then be aware of carbon monoxide; you shouldn't be doing a gas fire blower in an enclosed space. And then just a few other things to think about when you're talking about shovels and snowblowers, right, where are we going to store these things? Are they just going to be in our main vestibule and they're going to be sitting to the side and creating a trip hazard, or do we have a shed that we're going to keep them in? Ideally them sitting out are not creating another hazard for others to be able to become to create a slip, trip, and fall, especially when there's snow and ice all around. Again, designate who can do this and make sure it's being done properly, and make sure there's a set plan of when it's going to be done for the facility.

Okay, so when we talk about evacuations, we kind of hit on that, but why are winter evacuations unique? Because it takes more time, right, you're going to be dealing with poor conditions. So everybody's got to follow the directions a little bit more precisely and we have to do that, right? And it's just going to take longer to get everybody evacuated as opposed to having a fire in the summer where it's really easy to evacuate, right? We want to dress warmly, right? If you can encourage people to grab their coats before they leave their desk or their office if there's an evacuation, we don't want to create another hazard of hypothermia because we all got outside and nobody's dressed to be outside but we can't get back into the building. And then, practice it, right? We all typically have the fire drills and it's spring or summer and everybody goes outside and it's a super easy process, but we typically never practice when it's a winter situation, right? Who grabs their coats? Do we have extra blankets at the evacuation or maybe in the evacuation bags? Are we using backup muster locations? Is the location that we're all going to meet, is it properly cleared? Is it properly serviced? And so that's one of the things to think about from a practice drill, right? We typically don't do it in the winter, and I'm sure there's some organizations that do. I can just tell you that I probably haven't been part of many fire drills or evacuations happening in the wintertime. But it's something to think about, especially if you have unique situations or unique pathways that people may exit. It might not be a bad idea to go through it once or twice before you actually get to it.

Post-Winter Evaluations & Spring Readiness

Then, I always think it's important as safety professionals and facility leaders to make sure that we evaluate it, right? So after winter and our spring preparation, let's go look at how it went all winter. Did a, did the plow company or the shoveling company live up to the correct standard, right? Is that somebody we want to use again, or do we feel like it was deficient and we need to have a better plan? Planning it right after it's happened is probably more successful than waiting six months and trying to rethink what happened last winter. And so, create notes, create some things that you want to do, right? Reassessment of your parking lot for repair and update, right? We have paint, we have paint in our parking lots. Well, snowplows come through, they scrape up the paint, they scrape up the parking lot, maybe they get caught on a repaired pothole, and now we've got a huge pothole. And now we've created a slip, trip, and fall hazard or a hazard for vehicles entering the parking lot, right? And so maybe we need to fill that in. Maybe a plow tore up all kinds of our grass, and now the lot doesn't look how we want to represent our company or our organization, and we want to get that repaired. And then storage of our winter equipment, right, where are we storing our shovels? Where are you storing our snowblowers? Where are we storing our ice melts, right? They're out of the way, but they're put away properly so that next year they're able to be used and they're in the appropriate condition. So, these are just some things to think about after winter and as we move into the spring, right? Did any signs get damaged? Did a plow hit and take out our speed limit sign and now we don't have a speed limit sign because we never replaced it in the middle of the winter, but as we approach the spring, we want to replace that, right? We want to get that up and we want to make sure we maintain our safety in our parking lots. Obviously, if a stop sign gets run over by a plow, we probably need to replace that immediately, right? That could create a huge hazard if all of a sudden we have vehicles that are not stopping when they're supposed to be stopping. So, you can make the argument that the speed limit sign is just as important, but let's say we had another sign that was, you know, "Think Safety Today" or something like that. This is a good time though, once everybody's going to start going back outside, to reassess your parking lot and the outdoor of your facility to make sure it's how we want it to be as we go forward.

Webinar Summary

And so as we look at a summary, the areas we talked about, we talked about parking and walkways. So, plan your commute, safe footwear, and report the hazards, right? As that employer, we want to maintain a high standard of snow clearing and deicing. It's one of the top insurance claims that ends up happening for organizations when people slip, trip, and fall in the parking lot once they've entered that private property. Slips, trips, and falls indoors, right, wet floors, using entrance matting effectively. If you see a hazard, fix it or report it immediately to people who can get it fixed. And then evacuation, right, we talked about that. Ensure all exit paths are clear, right? Snow, ice blocking an exterior door, report it as an immediate safety hazard. That may be the only way out, and if that exit's blocked, that's not going to be good for the employees that need to get out that exit. And so, ultimately, this is an employer and an employee responsibility. And that's what, as leaders in buildings, we should want to communicate to be able to make this as safe a winter as for everyone.

Q&A: ANSI Footwear Standards and Required Signage

So, with that, I'm curious if there's any questions or comments or anything that anybody would like to share. Paul, there is a question if there's cold weather clothing or boots available in line or approved with ANSI/ISEA 2011 2019 standards.

So I don't know specifically on that footwear. I can do some research if you want to leave your email. I can kind of take a look and see if there's maybe recommended boots, footwear that we want to do. Off the top of my head, I don't have that answer for you immediately, but I will be happy to get back to you and try and dig in to see what I can find.

They dropped that, so I will make sure we will share that with you. Another question was if there is any, not even just recommended, but required signage that would be needed as you are prepping your whether it's your parking lot, your facility during the winter months.

So, from a requirement, there is an OSHA walking-working surfaces standard, which is what I would recommend each safety professional reviews. It was actually fairly recently updated in the last 10 years. Ultimately a parking lot is a walking-working surface. Our indoor facility, our concrete or our office, those are all walking-working surfaces. And so, when there is a wet floor, there'll be talk in that standard of making sure that we have signage that informs employees about that wet floor. So, that would be something that would be recommended or required. I usually try and, as a signs product manager, I think more about the recommended ones, right? I'm not sure I am aware of a standard that says that you have to let customers or have to let employees know that there may be ice present in your parking lot. I'm not sure that's required, but that's highly recommended and is a best practice, right? And ultimately, you as an employer, there's a general duty clause in most of all these standards that requires you to do the right thing and to think through the right thing. So, I can look through the walking-working surfaces standard and see if there's other ones that come up, but I'm not sure how close it, how much it really gets into ice and snow and parking lots besides probably more general statements around you need to keep your floor free of hazards, a hazard being ice. So there's definitely references to something like that in the walking-working surfaces standard.

Q&A: Speed Bump Removal in Winter

There's another question around speed bumps. So, the question is, typically during the warm weather months, we have speed bumps throughout our parking lot to mitigate, obviously, speeding. Is there any reason that we would need to keep those during the winter months, keeping in mind that there will be a need to remove them during snow removal?

Yeah, so, here at our facility, we have a speed bump as well, and I have not come up with a speed bump that can stand up to plows. So, if you're going to have your lot plowed, I think you're going to have an issue if you want to keep that speed bump in place. So, what we do here is we take that speed bump out every winter, we store it, and then it goes back in in the spring because, like I said, I have not seen a plow that can handle it. Otherwise, you're going to cause damage to your asphalt or your concrete; you might cause damage to the plow. But ultimately, you're just going to end up with an accident, you're going to end up a mess on your hands with a speed bump being present like that. So, that's really the best you could do, right? And so then it turns into more signage, maybe warning people about speed, especially if you have pedestrians crossing the walk or a pedestrian crosswalk. You're going to want to have some kind of speed control and to still limit it because you know you're not going to have snow, you're not going to have ice every day, right? You just might have cold weather, and you still want employees or vehicles driving on that road to maintain a correct speed so that we don't get a vehicle and pedestrian accident.

Q&A: Black Ice Signage Concerns

All right, we have one more question here around signage again and black ice. So black ice is obviously not apparent but can be very inconspicuous. Is there, do you know of any signs that are available, whether through Brady or through Brady, that would indicate if there's colder weather, if there's potential ice out in like a parking lot or something like that?

Yeah, I mean, Brady does a good job with custom signs as well. So if there is a sign that you see that isn't present, there's the ability to create a custom; you can give us a call and we can create a custom sign for you around "Black ice may be present at lower temperatures." I know we do have a bunch of signs around icy areas or cold temperatures, "Ice may be present," "Slippery when wet," and those are very popular signage legends that we have out there. But custom is always an option if you don't see what you look for. But it's definitely, I can take a look and see what other legends may be appropriate here kind of for the wintertime.

All right, great. Someone here mentioned rumble strips are another thing that might help you in terms of the speed limit or the speed bump issue. So, you know, installing rumble strips or things like that that may be able to withstand a plow, there may be some solutions out there.

Great. I don't believe there are any other questions at this time, so thank you everyone for attending. And we mentioned it before, but this is being recorded and it will be shared out to everyone in the next couple days. So, thank you again for attending.