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What’s the Biggest Mistake Facilities Teams Make Preparing for Winter?
The biggest mistake facilities teams make preparing for winter is relying on a quiet incident log and a stock of signs, instead of measuring how much grip their floors actually have. A quiet summer feels like proof the floors are fine, but nothing was testing them. Winter does not usually create a slip problem. It exposes one that was already there.
The short why
An incident log records only what has already gone wrong, and only when someone writes it down. Most slips are never reported. So a clean record says very little about how a floor will behave once wet shoes arrive at every entrance. Preparing from the log means preparing from the wrong evidence.
Why is a quiet incident log so misleading?
This is the belief worth challenging directly. No incidents does not mean no problem. A person who slips, catches themselves and carries on will never appear in your data. Near misses are the real warning sign, and they rarely get recorded.
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 for a long time. It may also exist at other sites in your estate, whether or not anything has been reported there.
Grip is invisible too. A floor can look spotless and dry and still have poor slip resistance, particularly where years of footfall have worn it smooth. Looking at it will not tell you.
What other mistakes follow from that?
Once a team assumes the floors are fine, a handful of other mistakes tend to follow. They are common, and they are easy to fix:
- Relying on signs: a sign warns people that a hazard exists, but it does not remove it, and a sign left out all winter is a symptom of a problem that is not being fixed
- Cleaning more: mopping adds moisture to a wet floor, and the wrong product or method can leave a residue that lowers grip
- Assuming matting is enough: matting only works if it is large enough, in good condition and where feet are wettest
- Testing only dry: a dry reading says very little about how an entrance behaves in the rain
- Treating every area the same: effort is spread thinly instead of focused on the zones that matter
- Having no owner: matting, cleaning and wet weather response fall between teams and contractors
Each of these is a way of managing the symptom rather than the cause.
Where should the effort go instead?
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, these 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
Focusing on these zones gives the biggest reduction in risk for the least cost.
How does CHIMES help you avoid the mistake?
The CHIMES framework gives a consistent way to look at what drives risk in each zone, rather than guessing:
- Contamination: rainwater, melted snow, mud, leaves and spills
- Heel: wet-weather footwear, which you cannot control
- Individual: who is exposed, and what they are carrying
- Maintenance: cleaning products, methods and timings, and whether floors are left damp
- Environment: weather coming in, lighting, ramps, steps and external paths
- Surface: the floor material and its measured slip resistance
Surface is the factor most often assumed rather than checked, which is why measuring matters so much.
How do you replace assumption with evidence?
By measuring. Slip resistance is assessed using pendulum testing, the method preferred by the HSE and relied on in UK slip litigation. It produces a Pendulum Test Value (PTV), and 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.
Slip Safety Services has found that organisations who measure first and then act on what they find see a 57%+ average reduction in slip incidents. The improvement comes from fixing real causes in the right places, rather than relying on a quiet log and a box of signs.
Acting early also gives you choices. If a zone tests poorly in October, you have time to adjust cleaning, improve matting or treat the surface, and to plan the work around your operations. If you find out in January, after an incident, the options are narrower and the pressure is higher. Prevention is an investment, not an expense, though no outcome can be guaranteed.
What to do about it
Before the weather turns, 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. Where there is no recent, dated reading, treat that as the first gap to close.
Then check entrance matting for size and condition, review cleaning products and methods with your contractor, and agree who owns each task. Record near misses and minor slips, so you have real data. This is general information, not legal advice, so check what applies to your estate with your health and safety adviser.
Next step
If you are not sure what your quiet log is hiding, the Slip Prevention Scorecard takes under four minutes per building and gives you a clear starting point, with a score for each of the six CHIMES factors. For the fuller method behind measuring, improving and proving floor grip, Slipology by Christian Harris covers the process in depth.
Related questions
- How do facilities teams prepare floors for winter?
- Why does slip risk increase in winter months?
- Should matting be replaced more often in winter?
- Does rain actually make floors more slippery?