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UKMHA Announce Exclusive Stand Offers at IMHX
UKMHA will be exhibiting alongside CFTS at this year’s IMHX on stand 5D12. Having been formed last year by the merger of the industry’s two most respected trade associations – the British Industrial Truck Association (BITA) and the Fork Lift Truck Association (FLTA), this is their first exhibition as UKMHA.
UKMHA are running an IMHX exclusive offer for visitors to their stand. For those who buy a ticket at the show to the upcoming Safety Convention, they will receive a second free ticket and will also receive a year’s free SUG membership. This offer is on a first-come basis and is limited to 20 purchases a day on each of the three days of IMHX.
Safety is at the heart of the organisation and the Safety Convention (previously he FLTA Safety Convention) is to be held at The Heart of England Conference Centre on 17th November. This is the most authoritative event of its kind in the materials handling calendar. It will see hundreds of managers, from across the UK, come together to share best practice advice.
The event is part of the Association’s drive to large-scale change for the better and this year’s event will be focussed on operator training. Collectively, Safety Convention delegates are responsible for the lives of many thousands of workers across the UK. It is crucial that they have the very best, most practical and valuable information and this is exactly what the Safety Convention strives to do.
One of the topics for the Safety Convention, in line with this year’s National Forklift Safety Day, is Operator Training. The UKMHA Safety Convention will be taking a holistic approach and looking at ‘The Life Cycle of Operator Training’. Training is often seen as a linear journey, but this is far from accurate. Training should be an ongoing process with no end point. Refresher training is equally as important as new training and without regular review operators, supervisors and managers can become complacent and this can prove to be a dangerous, even fatal, mistake.
Every year there are serious injuries, including fatalities, to truck operators and to pedestrians and co-workers, which could have been prevented if properly trained staff had followed safe systems of work. In fact, ‘struck by a moving vehicle’ is the second most common cause of workplace fatality, accounting for 25 deaths in the year 2020/21.
As companies continue to invest in new material handling equipment, storage solutions and technology, it is imperative that operators are given adequate training to ensure they know how to use the equipment safely in their specific working environment.
Sometimes it is assumed that an operator who has been given basic training on a particular piece of equipment will be able to safely transfer those skills to different equipment, and will, somehow, intuitively know the intricacies of different sites and tasks. Unfortunately, this can have serious consequences, which is why UKMHA have chosen this as an area of focus for the Safety Convention and will be heavily promoting at IMHX.
With the growth in high voltage technology, UKMHA will also launching a new Guidance Note specifically dealing with safe working practices for high voltage material handling equipment. This will be free to members and available to buy for non-members on the IMHX stand.
UKMHA are also using IMHX as an opportunity to launch their new Safety Alerts. These alerts will be published regularly on the UKMHA website and have been created by the Technical Committee Members to highlight safety issues and near-misses using real-life examples. It is hoped that these will help others identify similar potential issues in their operations and implement change to avoid incidents occurring.
Also on this year’s stand, UKMHA will be highlighting another of their annual events, the Archies, formerly known as the Awards for Excellence. Every year, entrants seek to win the ultimate accolade, a hand-cast Archie statuette, modelled on Archimedes — the father of engineering. The award has become the symbol of distinction within the materials handling sector, so to honour this most coveted prize, the event will henceforth be known as The Archies. The inaugural Archies is taking place on 15th October at Hilton Metropole Birmingham and will celebrate the best in the material handling industry.
Alongside the UKMHA stand, will be their company CFTS. CFTS was created in 2004 by BITA and FLTA and since their merger in 2021, now sits under UKMHA. Their focus for IMHX this year is the importance of accredited Thorough Examination.
A lack of national standards historically meant there was no consistency between equipment inspections with a high risk of corners being cut. Owners could not be confident that their trucks were legal or safe to use. PUWER and LOLER regulations legally require all lift trucks to have a valid Report of Thorough Examination but there was little official guidance about what this should cover.
To provide clarity, the materials handling industry’s major trade associations worked together to give clear, definitive procedures and consistent national standards for a safe and genuine Thorough Examination. The result was the creation of CFTS: a national accreditation scheme for Thorough Examination, specifically for companies who service work equipment.
CFTS serves owners and users of equipment throughout a wide variety of industries, including agriculture, construction, materials handling and logistics. The distinctive CFTS mark is a guarantee that a Thorough Examination is full and valid under law and will be carried out by a fully trained engineer in accordance with strict quality procedures.
Only companies that are officially accredited to CFTS can use the distinctive kitemark on literature, certification and reports, and can place the CFTS stickers on the trucks they inspect. The CFTS sticker shows that the equipment has received a genuinely Thorough Examination, satisfying both LOLER and PUWER regulations. There are now hundreds of CFTS-accredited companies ensuring coverage all around the UK and Ireland.
Both CFTS and UKMHA will have their expert teams available on the IMHX stand to offer advice and guidance. Visitors are also encouraged to visit stand 5D12 to find out more about the work UKMHA and CFTS carry out in the industry, particularly around best-practice, health and safety and legal obligations. Visitors can also discover the benefits to their business of being part of these important industry associations as well as take advantage of the exclusive IMHX offers.
Register for IMHX here: