Technical FAQ

Paragraph 634 of the HSE publication “Warehousing and storage – A guide to health and safety” HSG76 states that “Racking should have a clear unambiguous notice securely fixed to it, stating the maximum load together with any necessary specified load configurations”, and refers to the SEMA publication on Load Notices.

The load notice is a safety sign and, as well as giving information about the Safe Working Load (SWL) of the racking, also gives important instructions and information about the general usage of the racking. As the load notice is a safety sign it must comply with safety sign legislation i.e. the Health & Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996 and these regulations require that the safety sign must follow certain rules, for example, with respect to the shape and colour of the sign.

So, the SEMA load notice is the easiest way for an employer to:

• Comply with HSE recommendations
• Satisfy their legal obligation to supply the information about safe operation of the racking
• Follow the safety sign legislation

Whilst it would be ill advised to reduce the information on the load notice your supplier might consider it helpful to add some further information e.g. the design code used, the beam/upright designation etc. and, provided that this does not impair the purpose of the load notice, this should be satisfactory.

The load notice is a safety sign and, as well as giving loading information, also gives important instructions and information about the general usage of the racking e.g. prohibitions about altering or climbing the racking as well as an instruction to report damage and signposts to information sources.

Paragraph 634 of the HSE publication “Warehousing and storage – A guide to health and safety” HSG76 states that “Racking should have a clear unambiguous notice securely fixed to it, stating the maximum load together with any necessary specified load configurations”, and goes on to refer to the SEMA publication on Load Notices.

The load notice is a safety sign and, if fitted after 1996, must comply with safety sign legislation i.e. the Health & Safety (Safety Signs and Signals) Regulations 1996. These regulations require that the safety sign must follow certain rules, for example, with respect to the shape and colour of the sign.

Therefore, the SEMA load notice must be in colour. A SEMA Approved Rack Inspector (SARI) will categorize a monochrome load notice as an Amber risk.

There is a Load Notice video on the SEMA website that gives more information.

The Load Notice should provide sufficient information to enable the rack to be used in accordance with the designer’s intentions.

If you have racking with different configurations then this information could be transmitted by providing a different load notice for each configuration or, alternatively, by using a load notice that gave an acceptable solution for all the configurations – what an engineer might call a “conservative” or “lower-bound solution”

The recommended way to fit a load notice depends upon the product to which you are fitting the Load Notice. In the case of adjustable pallet racking it is a common practice to fit the load notice to the frame bracing, for shelving it will often be fitted to the shelving frame, for cantilever racking the notice will generally be fitted to the column and for mezzanines to a main beam on the perimeter of the floor.

If the load notice is stuck (glued) to the storage equipment there is unlikely to be any problem as far as the storage equipment is concerned, however, the glue might fail and the load notice fall off. If a screw fixing is chosen then care is necessary as it is possible to affect the structural integrity of the equipment if unsuitable holes are drilled and some manufacturers will therefore, prohibit drilling holes in certain racking components, or will only permit holes up to a certain diameter and/or in particular positions in the member.

In all cases the supplier/manufacturer should be consulted for a preferred fixing method and location.

This is down to your risk assessment as to what needs inspecting. You can have office shelving which can be classed as furniture, and as long as you don’t have people pulling such items as loaded hand pallet trucks into the offices the potential of impact and collapse can be treated in the same way as you would normal office furniture.

However, a high throughput warehouse operating 24/7 would be at the lower end of the range and indeed might need inspections every three months in some circumstances. In slower-moving single-shift environments, the inspection could be at the top end of the scale.

Whether you require a third-party sign-off depends on the hand-over certification and the competence of the installer of the racking.

If it is installed by a company who are competent to install the racking and they provide suitable documentation that confirms that the racking has been installed in accordance with SEMA and the racking manufacturer's requirements, then an additional official check may not be required.

SEMA recommends that racking inspections should be carried out on an onion skin approach.

First of all, the equipment operators are the first line of defence and should always be encouraged to report damage as it occurs. To achieve this there should not be a blame culture or nothing will ever be reported and also the operators need to see that things happen as a result of reporting some damage or again nothing will be reported.

The second line of defense should be a supervisor’s weekly patrol inspection carried out with the express purpose of checking the racking. This should be done at weekly intervals normally at a standard walking pace keeping documented records of the inspection and action points resulting from the inspection.

The final level of protection is the formal inspection that should be carried out every 6 or 12 months depending on the level of activity in the warehouse. As stated by the HSE, this must be undertaken by a competent person.

To provide your employees with the knowledge and skills they need to identify and record damage, SEMA runs a one-day Rack Safety Awareness course.

The course, which is referenced in HSG76 Warehousing and Storage: A Guide to Health and Safety, is specific to end users’ sites and instructs employees on how to undertake daily checks. It covers the safe operation of racking systems, load notices, industry guidance, and examples of damage and how to  how to categorise and prevent damage from happening.

The course then goes on to provide information on weekly inspections and the tools needed by a Person Responsible for Racking Safety (PRRS), as the role recommended in HSG76. The course covers in-house rack inspections, how to conduct risk assessments, reporting, and recording damage levels and action points. The course also provides guidance on the best inspection routine to implement.

For the expert inspection, HSG76 Warehousing and Storage: A Guide to Health and Safety recommends using a competent person who has the correct qualifications. While HSE are keen to endure a high standard in such inspectors they will not insist that it is work that can only be done by people with a certain level of qualification. SEMA runs a SEMA Approved Rack Inspector (SARI) qualification whereby a rack inspector can demonstrate the level of training and competence to a client and a number of us who carry out such surveys on a regular basis have passed through this course which is of a very high standard and has a significant failure rate.

If you need such a person you will find an up-to-date list of qualified SARI inspectors together with contact details.

Having said all the above it is possible for an inspector to demonstrate his competency by means other than this course however that is a matter between the inspector and the client.

The issue is that you need to inform anyone who is using the rack with carrying capacity information and anything else they need to know to use the rack safely.

In theory therefore if all your racking in the warehouse was to the same configuration and all fork trucks came into and out of the warehouse through one single door it would be adequate to have only one sign adjacent to the door as all drivers would pass this sign before placing pallets in the rack.

Life is rarely that simple however, but it does boil down to your risk assessment. If you have a lot of racking the same, then a sign on every other rack or even every 3^rd run might be acceptable. If there are differences between adjacent runs where drivers might become confused, then you would need to anticipate this and have more signage so there is no excuse for operators making mistakes and blaming the lack of signage as the cause.

A key difference between racking and shelving is that shelving is almost always loaded by hand and the weight of the individual goods carried is comparatively low (typically less than 25kg), furthermore, the total weight carried in a bay of shelving will typically be less than 4T. Racking is typically loaded by machine (forklift truck or crane) and the unit loads carried are typically heavy, i.e. many hundreds of kg; pallet weights exceeding 1T are common. The weight of goods carried in a bay of racking can exceed 40T in extreme circumstances. Racking is typically, therefore, a heavier-duty system than shelving utilising larger members and thicker material.

If a racking structure has some sort of flat surface (decking, panels, etc.) positioned on the beams then (with appropriate design) it is possible to use a racking structure as shelving. It is impossible to safely use a shelving structure as racking, i.e. storing pallets, etc.

SEMA defines racking as:

A skeleton framework of fixed or adjustable design to support loads generally without the use of shelves. The term racking is usually qualified, e.g. Pallet Racking, Tyre Racking, Drum Racking, etc.

Adjustable pallet racking is defined as:

A system of upright frames that are connected by horizontal beams to provide pallet storage levels, which can be adjusted vertically.

SEMA defines Shelving as:

A series of load-carrying surfaces (shelves) supported by upright frames

Unfortunately, many people are not particularly precise in the use of these terms and will interchange them, which can lead to confusion.