Latest PS Industries® Incorporated News

Flood protection is serious business, and rightly so. If a company claims that a product will perform a certain way under flooding conditions, failing to live up to those claims can be disastrous for everyone involved. As a result, various organizations have evolved in North America over the past century with the purpose of standardizing, testing and certifying manufactured flood protection measures. However, each of these entities approaches this critical task in a slightly different way, and that can lead to confusion on the part of those purchasing and installing the products. Here’s a brief overview of the most important organizations in flood control – and what each of them views as their responsibility in making sure that flood products live up to their promise.

All production facilities, from manufacturing to agriculture to food preparation, deal with industrial spills. These accidents range from inconvenient (like an accidental sprinkler release) to hazardous (oil or chemicals, for example), but all spills require a fast, dependable response that benefits from planning. For the most part, the adverse impact of an industrial spill of any scope is inversely proportional to the preparedness of the team and facility responsible for it. In other words, the more you plan for spills, the less of a problem they present.

Work for any length of time in the business of keeping workers safe, and you will become familiar with a large number of acronyms that represent safety-based organizations or programs, some of which provide government oversight and others that offer private certification. To the rest of the workforce, though, these acronyms represent an arcane and challenging dilemma – everybody knows that acronym-named organizations like OSHA are important, but they would be hard-pressed to explain what they do.

Industry has been built on ingenuity, but as a result, many companies face something of a consistency problem. Seven out of ten pieces of equipment in their plant are “standard,” but those other three have been modified somehow to meet a unique need. Some of the most important jobs in an industrial setting need to be done by custom-built products, and that goes for doors, hatches, gates and barriers as much as it does for automation and technology.

Are there reliable flood protection barriers that don’t require human intervention? Are there measures that deploy automatically when flooding occurs? The answer is yes.

It may seem like a paradox, but the more automation is introduced into industrial and manufacturing facilities, the more important it becomes to keep workers safe around machines. The less direct interaction humans have with mechanical technology, the more likely we are to take our safety around them for granted.

To move heavy loads in and out of an industrial facility, a monorail crane system is sometimes employed. These systems use a stationary overhead track and a trolley that runs on it, shuttling payloads back and forth. When the payload needs to go in and out of a building, it utilizes a specialized door known as a “monorail door.”

Wally J. Staples values the people on his team. His company, Wally J. Staples Builders in Brunswick, Maine, has been building custom homes since 1993, and during that time, he has worked hard to keep his longtime employees safe and satisfied with their jobs. To deal with the current shortage of tradespeople, Staples took the unique step of constructing a wood shop so that his carpenters could do more of their work indoors before installing custom cabinetry, etc., on site. It was the design of this new facility that led Staples to PS Safety Access™ and its EdgeSafe® Smart Gate.

The safest safety gates on the market, these new gates feature Slam-Proof technology that closes each gate in a quiet, controlled manner. They have been tested to meet or exceed OSHA, ANSI and Canadian COHS standards, providing top- and mid-rail protection to minimize the chances of a fall from elevated platforms, mezzanines or ladderways.

It’s easy to forget how important atmospheric pressure can be to the proper and safe function of doors in a commercial facility. There can be a dramatic pressure difference between two adjoining rooms, which can result in situations that are both dangerous for workers and punishing on doors.