Safe Evacuations from SafeSmart – When Purchase Beats Hire
SafeSmart Access have worked together with Buildcorp for their works at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital. The brief for SafeSmart was to develop customised yet compliant access work stairs.
For a duration of two years, while Buildcorp’s works are occurring, St Vincent’s required temporary access to an elevated first aid shed on a 4m-high hoarding. SafeSmart helped Buildcorp with their budget, weighing up the pros and cons of hire versus purchase. It was concluded that an actual purchase worked out to be more economical according to a per-month rate over the total period of use compared to hiring. And the additional benefit for the client was a more customised solution.
To enable emergency use, the stairs needed to be wide enough to accommodate the manoeuvring of a horizontally-held stretcher without having it pitch at an angle beyond the safe limit.
As usual, SafeSmart assessed the area onsite—in this case, Darlinghurst NSW—and utilised their in-house design team to create a new design from spec that fit the hoarding perfectly.
All Safe, in Situ
Thanks to the modular and flexible nature of SafeSmart’s Proscaf steel componentry —stringers and steel decks—the elements were already available; all it took was SafeSmart’s designers to come up with a solution utilising these parts. This type of flexibility simply isn’t available at standard scaffolding companies.
The result is an ultra-strong and stable 1.4m-wide stair set that emergency crews and hospital staff can use on a regular basis for safely transporting patients on foot. And on top of the customised nature of the product, standard features that set SafeSmart Access apart from many off-the-shelf solutions were included, such locking treads to ensure the optimum stability of the scaffold, and perforated decks for grip.
A Healthy Outlook
The feedback from Buildcorp has been extremely positive. SafeSmart are now well-positioned to become the go-to place for custom equipment when safety guidelines and OH&S procedures—something that is paramount in the health sector—are central to the operational requirements of the client.
