As one of the UK Material Handling Association’s (UKMHA) most significant campaigns, National Forklift Safety Day aims to emphasise the importance of safe working practices for everyone working in the material handling industry.
Focussing on incident prevention and response, and supported by the tagline ‘Prevent – Manage – Learn’, this year’s initiative will begin on the 11th of June and run until the 9th of December.
Unlike previous years, National Forklift Safety Day 2024 is a multi-stage campaign that involves releasing resources on different weekdays across seven months, in line with the ambition to ‘make every day National Forklift Safety Day’.
Each release will focus on a different aspect of forklift incidents, the first of which the UKMHA has called Prepare. This opening stage will review the protections that should be in place everywhere that MHE is used.
Remarking on the first stage of this year’s NFSD initiative, UKMHA’s Technical Director David Goss said: “Workplaces should be safe environments where the risk of an incident occurring is reduced to the minimum. Our compliance checklists provide a simple method to verify that legal obligations ensuring the safety of staff and visitors are being met.”
He continued: “Our goal is to ensure that everyone in the material handling industry is safeguarded against the most serious consequences of forklift accidents, and the release of our preparation-focused resources will allow us to do just that.”
To support the campaign, the UKMHA will be releasing a selection of useful resources that educate people about what to do in the event of an incident, including compliance checklists, animation videos, and real-world case studies. They will share these materials via their website and social media pages, so those who wish to participate are advised to keep a close eye on the UKMHA’s posts on 11th June and the following days.
These resources will cover a range of important topics, including monitoring and recognising unsafe working practices, incident response, and accident investigation.
National Forklift Safety Day information is freely available to all, but additional resources will be available exclusively to UKMHA Safe User Group (SUG) members. Further information about the Safe User Group and a membership application form can be found at: https://ukmha.org.uk/safe-user-group/
For more information about this year’s National Forklift Safety Day campaign, please visit: https://nationalforkliftsafetyday.co.uk/
