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Building a Slip Prevention Plan Across Multiple Sites
A slip prevention plan across multiple sites is a structured, ongoing process for measuring, improving and maintaining floor safety consistently across every location, rather than reacting site by site after something goes wrong. It works best when it follows the same method everywhere, adapted to each site’s specific risk zones. Prevention built this way is an investment in reducing future costs, not a response to a claim that’s already happened.
One site’s problem is every site’s warning
If you manage facilities across multiple hospitality sites, you’ve probably seen this pattern. A slip incident happens at one location, and suddenly there’s a flurry of activity there, a review, maybe a new mat, a reminder to staff. The other sites carry on as before, because nothing’s gone wrong there yet.
That reactive approach rests on an old belief worth challenging directly: we’ll deal with it if a claim comes in. The trouble is, by the time a claim lands, the underlying risk has usually existed for a while, often at more than one site. Prevention isn’t a cost you absorb after something goes wrong. It’s an investment that keeps the cost from arising in the first place, and building a proper slip prevention plan across your whole portfolio is how that investment actually pays off.
What does a slip prevention plan across multiple sites actually involve?
At its core, a slip prevention plan is a repeatable process, applied consistently across every site you manage, rather than a one-off exercise carried out wherever an incident happens to occur. That consistency matters because slip risk doesn’t respect site boundaries. If one site has a contamination issue at its entrance, similar sites with similar layouts and similar footfall patterns are likely facing the same exposure, whether or not it’s shown up yet.
A proper plan means every site is assessed using the same method, measured against the same standard, and reviewed on the same schedule, even though the specific risks at each location may differ.
Why “deal with it if a claim happens” fails across a portfolio
This is the belief worth challenging head-on. Reacting site by site means you’re always addressing yesterday’s problem, at the one location where it became visible, while identical risk sits unaddressed everywhere else. It also means every site effectively reinvents its own response, with no shared standard or evidence base behind it.
Treating prevention as an investment changes that. Instead of waiting for an incident to reveal where the risk is, you’re actively looking for it, consistently, across your entire estate. Slip Safety Services has found that organisations who move from a reactive, site-by-site response to a structured, portfolio-wide approach see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents, because the same standard is being applied everywhere, not just where something has already gone wrong.
How do you build the plan itself?
A slip prevention plan across multiple sites follows the same four-stage process at every location, though the findings and priorities will differ site to site.
Assess: measure each site’s actual risk using pendulum testing, focused on the zones most likely to matter, entrances, kitchens, bars, wet areas. This isn’t a walkaround. It’s a specific, comparable reading for each zone.
Amend: fix what the assessment reveals, whether that’s a treatment, a cleaning regime change, or addressing a drainage or matting issue, matched to that site’s specific findings.
Advocate: get genuine buy-in from site-level teams, since a plan only works if the standards are actually followed day to day, not just documented centrally.
Assure: maintain the improvement through ongoing cleaning practices and scheduled re-checks, so gains don’t quietly erode over time.
Running every site through the same four stages gives you a consistent standard across the portfolio, even where the specific risks and fixes differ.
What should you actually be assessing at each site?
Rather than guessing where risk sits, the CHIMES framework gives every site manager a consistent checklist to work through:
- Contamination: water, grease, food or cleaning residue, and where it tends to build up at that specific site
- Heel: the footwear typically worn in each zone, staff kitchen shoes versus guests in wet-weather footwear at reception
- Individual: who’s exposed, and how often, staff on long shifts versus guests passing through
- Maintenance: whether the current cleaning products and methods are helping or quietly reducing grip
- Environment: lighting, gradients, and transitions between wet and dry zones
- Surface: the floor material itself, and its current, measured slip resistance
Using the same six factors at every site means findings are genuinely comparable, and you can spot patterns across your portfolio rather than treating each location as an isolated case.
How do you keep the plan consistent across different site types?
Multi-site hospitality portfolios rarely consist of identical buildings. A city-centre hotel, a countryside pub, and a leisure venue with a pool will have very different risk profiles. The plan itself should stay the same. What changes is where you focus.
A useful way to think about this is zoning each site by risk level, rather than treating the whole building the same way. High-risk zones, entrances, kitchens, pool surrounds, warrant the most frequent testing and the highest standard of control. Lower-risk zones, quiet corridors, back offices, need far less intervention. This zonal thinking, applied consistently across every site, means you’re not over-investing in low-risk areas at one site while under-investing in high-risk areas at another.
How do you know the plan is actually working?
This is where the shift from reactive to preventive becomes visible. A working plan produces evidence, not assumption. That means dated PTV readings for every site’s high-risk zones, a documented record of any remedial work carried out, and a visible trend in incident numbers across the portfolio over time, not just at the one site that had a recent scare.
If incident numbers are trending down consistently across multiple sites, not just the one that got attention after a claim, that’s a genuine sign the plan is working, rather than a lucky quiet period at any single location.
What good looks like
A facilities team managing this well has every site assessed on the same schedule, using the same method, with high-risk zones checked more frequently than low-risk ones. Findings and improvements are tracked centrally, so patterns across the portfolio are visible, not just individual site reports filed away separately. Cleaning regimes reflect each site’s specific risk profile, rather than a single generic instruction sent to every location. And when a new site joins the portfolio, it’s brought into the same assessment cycle immediately, rather than waiting for its first incident to prompt attention.
The takeaway
Waiting for a claim to prompt action means managing risk one site at a time, always a step behind. A proper slip prevention plan treats prevention as a portfolio-wide investment, applied consistently everywhere, not a reaction confined to wherever something last went wrong.
Next step
If you’re not sure how consistently your sites are currently being managed, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes a few minutes per site and gives you a comparable starting point across your portfolio. For a proper, defensible reading of your highest-risk sites, a professional slip test gives you the full picture. And for the fuller method behind building this out properly, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
FAQ
What’s the difference between a slip prevention plan and a one-off floor assessment?
A one-off assessment gives you a snapshot of a single site at a single point in time. A slip prevention plan is an ongoing, repeatable process applied consistently across every site, with scheduled re-testing and documented improvement over time.
How do you prioritise which sites to assess first across a large portfolio?
Start with the sites and zones most likely to have contamination or heavy footfall, such as entrances, kitchens, bars and pool areas, since these carry the highest risk regardless of site type. From there, apply the same assessment method across every remaining site on a rolling schedule.
Does every site in a portfolio need the same level of intervention?
No. The assessment process should be consistent everywhere, but the findings will differ. Some sites may need significant improvement work, while others may already be performing well. The plan ensures every site is checked to the same standard, not that every site receives the same fix.
How often should a multi-site slip prevention plan be reviewed?
High-risk zones generally warrant testing at least annually, with more frequent checks wherever contamination, footfall or cleaning products change. The overall plan should be reviewed regularly enough that no site goes unchecked for an extended period.
Can a slip prevention plan reduce insurance costs across a portfolio?
No specific outcome can be guaranteed, since pricing decisions sit with insurers and brokers. What a documented, consistent plan can do is provide clear evidence of proactive risk management across your sites, which supports a stronger position at renewal.