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Winter Slip Risk: What Facilities Managers Need to Prepare For
Winter slip risk is the increased chance of someone slipping when wet weather, cold, darker days and heavy footfall meet floors that may already have poor grip. It does not usually create a slip problem. It exposes one that was there all along. Preparing means measuring the grip of your highest-risk floors before the weather turns, and fixing what you find.
A quiet summer feels like proof that your floors are fine. It isn’t.
If you manage an estate, you will know the pattern. The summer passes without much trouble, the incident log looks quiet, and the sense is that the floors are in good shape. When someone asks how your sites are doing, “we haven’t had any issues” feels like a fair answer.
That belief is worth challenging. No incidents does not mean no problem. A floor with poor grip can look perfectly fine through a dry season, because nothing is testing it. Then wet shoes arrive at every entrance, and the weak spots show. This article explains why winter slip risk catches facilities teams out, uses the CHIMES framework to show where it comes from, and sets out what to check before the weather turns.
Why does slip risk rise in winter?
Winter does not make floors more slippery by itself. It adds several pressures at once, and they combine.
- More water indoors: rain, melted snow and wet umbrellas come in on shoes, coats and bags
- Colder, damper surfaces: cold floors and walls can attract condensation, particularly near doors and in poorly ventilated areas
- Darker days: less natural light and more time spent in artificial light can make wet patches and changes of level harder to see
- Leaves and mud: the autumn fall and wet ground are tracked into buildings
- Heavier clothing and bags: people carry more, and see less of the floor
- Busy periods: footfall can rise around seasonal events and shorter days
Any one of these is manageable. Together, on a floor that has worn smooth, they are where the risk shows up.
Why doesn’t a clean incident log prove you are ready?
An incident log only records what has already gone wrong, and only when someone reports it. Most slips are never written down. A visitor, pupil or member of staff who slips on a wet entrance, catches themselves and carries on will never appear in your data.
Treating a clean log as proof of safe floors is like judging a car’s brakes by the fact you have not crashed yet. By the time an incident does appear, the grip problem underneath has usually been there a long time. It may also exist at other sites in your estate, whether or not anything has been reported there.
There is a second problem. Grip is invisible. A floor can look spotless and dry and still have poor slip resistance, particularly where years of footfall have worn the surface smooth. Looking at it, or walking across it in your own shoes, will not tell you.
What should you assess? Using CHIMES for winter
The CHIMES framework gives you a structured way to see what drives risk in each zone, rather than guessing. For winter, it looks like this:
- Contamination: rainwater, melted snow, mud, leaves, and condensation
- Heel: the footwear people wear in wet weather, which you cannot control, and the footwear your staff wear, which you may be able to
- Individual: who is exposed, from visitors unfamiliar with your site to staff on long shifts, and what they are carrying
- Maintenance: cleaning products, methods and timings, and whether they help or reduce grip, including how floors are left after mopping
- Environment: weather coming in, lighting, ramps, steps, external paths and the transition from outside to inside
- Surface: the floor material and its measured slip resistance, wet as well as dry
Not every zone needs the same level of attention. Most of an estate is low risk, a bit like a 70 mile an hour zone, where keeping floors clean, dry and clear of spills is enough. A smaller number of areas are 20 mile an hour zones, where you need to go further. In winter, they are usually:
- Entrances, lobbies and doorways
- External paths, steps and ramps leading to entrances
- Corridors and stairs on the main wet routes
- Areas near toilets, kitchens and food outlets
- Transitions between different flooring types
Is entrance matting enough on its own?
Entrance matting is the first answer most sites reach for in winter, and it matters. It is meant to dry feet and remove water before people step onto the main floor. But it only works if it is large enough, made of effective material and well maintained.
In our work, we have seen a major station with three metres of entrance matting where the floor was still wet well beyond the end of it on a rainy day. If three metres is not always enough at a very busy site, a short mat at a smaller entrance is unlikely to be.
Matting also does nothing for the floor beyond its edges. And a wet floor sign does not fix the problem either. A sign warns people that a hazard exists. It does not remove it. If a sign is out all winter, it is a symptom of a problem that is not being dealt with.
Does cleaning more often fix winter slip risk?
Not automatically. Cleaning is an activity. A safe floor is an outcome. You can do the first every day without achieving the second.
In winter, cleaning has its own risks. Mopping adds moisture to a floor that is already wet. The wrong product or method can leave a residue that lowers grip. And if a surface has worn smooth, no amount of cleaning restores its grip. The right standard is the right floor, with the right care, matched to what each zone faces.
How do you find out whether your floors are ready?
By measuring them. Slip resistance is assessed using pendulum testing, the method preferred by the HSE and relied on in UK slip litigation. It swings a rubber slider across the floor to mimic a heel strike and produces a Pendulum Test Value (PTV). A PTV of 36 or above is generally regarded as low slip potential. Below that, risk rises as the number falls.
Test your priority zones wet as well as dry. A dry reading says very little about how an entrance will perform in the rain. A single reading is also only a snapshot, because floors change through wear, cleaning and footfall. A result from last winter does not tell you how a floor performs today.
Measurement helps separate causes that look the same:
- If a zone tests poorly even after a thorough clean, the surface itself is likely the issue
- If it tests much better after a deep clean with the right product, residue or contamination was the cause
- If readings fall after a change of product or contractor, the new approach may be lowering grip
What should you do before winter arrives?
The Slipology Method gives a clear sequence you can apply across an estate.
Assess: measure the real risk in the priority zones, wet and dry.
Amend: fix the floor and the conditions at source. That might mean changing cleaning products or methods, improving entrance matting, or treating a surface to raise its grip. In many cases, a floor can be treated without being replaced.
Advocate: get buy-in from cleaning contractors, site teams and security, so the standard holds in practice.
Assure: maintain grip through the right cleaning approach and planned re-testing.
Affirm: keep dated records, so you can prove the result.
Slip Safety Services has found that organisations following this approach see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents. The improvement comes from fixing real causes in the right places, rather than relying on signs and a quiet log.
Pre-winter checklist
- List your wettest and busiest zones at each site, and rank them
- Find out when each was last tested, and whether the test was done wet
- Check that entrance matting is large enough, in good condition and covers where feet are wettest
- Ask your cleaning team or contractor which products and methods are used where
- Check lighting at entrances, external paths and steps
- Make sure everyone knows how to deal with spills and wet floors quickly, and how to dry floors properly after cleaning
- Record near misses and minor slips, so you have real data
- Agree a re-testing schedule, rather than waiting for something to go wrong
Requirements for external areas, such as gritting and path management, vary by site and circumstance, so check what applies to your estate with your health and safety adviser.
What good looks like
A facilities manager preparing well for winter knows which zones carry the highest risk across the estate and has recent, dated PTV readings for them, wet and dry. Entrance matting is checked for size and condition, not assumed to be working. Cleaning products and methods suit each type of flooring, and floors are dried properly.
Near misses are recorded and used as information, rather than ignored because nobody was hurt. Standards are consistent across every site, not just the one that had the last scare. And when someone asks how ready the estate is for winter, there is a measured answer, not a reference to how quiet the log has been.
The takeaway
A quiet incident log tells you what has not been reported yet. It does not tell you whether your floors are ready for winter. Most estates do not have a winter problem, they have a grip problem, and a grip problem can only be found by measuring it before the weather does.
Next step
If you are not sure whether your sites are ready, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes under four minutes per building. It gives you an overall score and a score for each of the six CHIMES factors, so you can see where to focus first. For the fuller method behind measuring, improving and proving floor grip, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
FAQ
Why do floors get more slippery in winter?
Winter brings more water into buildings on shoes and coats, along with mud, leaves and condensation. Darker days make wet patches harder to see. If a floor has worn smooth or matting is too small, grip can fall sharply once it is wet.
How should facilities managers prepare for winter slip risk?
Start by identifying the wettest and busiest zones, then measure their slip resistance, wet as well as dry. Check entrance matting, review cleaning products and methods, and make sure lighting is adequate. Record the results and agree a re-testing schedule.
What is a safe slip resistance level for a wet floor?
A Pendulum Test Value (PTV) of 36 or above when wet is generally regarded as low slip potential, based on HSE guidance. Below that, risk rises as the number falls. The reading should be taken for the specific zone, wet as well as dry.
Is entrance matting enough to stop slips in winter?
Not on its own. Matting helps only if it is large enough, in good condition and covers where feet are wettest, and it does nothing for the floor beyond its edges. It works best alongside measured floor grip and the right cleaning approach.
Do I need to test floors if there have been no slips?
An absence of reported incidents does not mean an absence of risk, because most slips and near misses go unreported. Testing gives you a measurement of grip, rather than relying on the incident log. Requirements vary by circumstance, so check what applies to your estate.