Walk into almost any warehouse and you will find pallet racking carrying tonnes of stock directly above the places people work. Walk into the same warehouse after a rack collapse and you will almost always find the same two causes: damage that nobody reported, and an inspection regime that existed on paper or not at all. Racking failures are rare, but they are violent, fast and frequently fatal, and the questions below are the ones every warehouse manager should be able to answer.
Is racking inspection a legal requirement?
Yes. Pallet racking is work equipment under the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998 (PUWER). That means it must be suitable for its purpose, maintained in an efficient state and in good repair, and, where deterioration could lead to danger, inspected at suitable intervals by a competent person, with the results recorded and kept. Sitting above PUWER, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 requires you to protect employees and anyone else affected by your business, including visiting drivers, from foreseeable risks. A rack that could collapse is about as foreseeable as risks get.
The practical detail comes from two places: HSE guidance HSG76, Warehousing and storage: keep it safe, and the European standard BS EN 15635, which covers the use and maintenance of storage equipment. EN 15635 is not law in itself, but HSE and the courts treat it as the benchmark of good practice: follow it and you can demonstrate compliance, ignore it and you will have to prove your alternative was just as good.
How often should pallet racking be inspected?
EN 15635 builds racking inspection on three levels that work together, and a compliant site runs all three:
- Immediate reporting, continuously. Everyone who works in or passes through the warehouse reports damage and impacts the moment they happen, even when there is no visible mark. An impact can crack a weld or spring a beam connector invisibly.
- Visual inspections, typically weekly. A trained person, usually the PRSES or their nominee, walks the racking on a planned schedule with a checklist and records what they find, including a nil return. The exact frequency is set by risk assessment: high throughput and 24 hour operations inspect more often.
- An expert inspection at least every 12 months. A technically competent person, such as a SEMA Approved Racking Inspector (SARI), inspects the whole installation and issues a written, classified report. Twelve months is a maximum, not a target.
An annual inspection on its own is not enough. Without the two site levels underneath it, damage can sit in a loaded rack for the best part of a year before anyone qualified looks at it.
Who can carry out a racking inspection?
It depends on the level. The annual expert inspection needs a technically competent specialist, which for most sites means a SARI. The weekly visual inspection is done in house, by a trained member of staff, and this is where the PRSES comes in: the Person Responsible for Storage Equipment Safety. EN 15635 expects every site with storage equipment to nominate one, a named individual who runs the inspection regime, keeps the damage log, controls the damage classification process and makes sure load notices stay accurate. “Competent” in this context means trained: someone who knows the components, the damage limits and the procedures, not just someone handed a clipboard.
The traffic light system: green, amber and red
EN 15635 turns damage assessment into a measurable method. You hold a 1 metre straight edge against the damaged member, centred on the worst of the bend, and measure the maximum gap. For an upright bent in the down-aisle direction the limit is 5 mm; bent across the aisle, in the plane of the frame, it is 3 mm; for bracing members it is 10 mm.
- Green, within the limit: the component is serviceable. Record it and monitor it, because damage accumulates.
- Amber, over the limit but less than twice it: hazardous. Offload as soon as practicable, do not reload once empty, and repair within 4 weeks. Miss the deadline and it automatically becomes red.
- Red, more than twice the limit, or any crack, split or weld failure: offload immediately under supervision, isolate the location so it cannot be reloaded, and replace the damaged components before use.
Two rules sit alongside the numbers. First, some defects go straight to a competent engineer whatever the ruler says: dents in the face of the section, tears, cracked welds, sheared anchors and corrosion. Second, damaged racking components are replaced, never straightened. Cold working bent racking steel weakens it invisibly, and applying heat is worse.
What should a weekly racking inspection cover?
A good weekly walk-round covers both sides of every run and checks, as a minimum: uprights and bracing for bends, dents, twists and corrosion; beams for permanent deflection and damaged connectors; beam safety locks present at every beam end; baseplates and floor anchors; column guards and barriers; load notices present, legible and matching the configuration in front of you; pallet condition and load placement; and aisle and floor condition. Every inspection is recorded and dated, even when the answer is “no defects found”. Under PUWER, an inspection that is not written down cannot be proved.
Racking inspection training
The regime above stands or falls on trained people, and that is exactly what our Racking Inspection Training course delivers. It is a CPD certified online course built around BS EN 15635, SEMA guidance and HSG76, covering the legal framework, rack anatomy, load notices, the causes of damage, the three level inspection regime, the straight edge method and traffic light classification, damage procedures and repair rules. It includes downloadable working documents, a weekly inspection checklist, a damage log, a classification quick reference, a damage report form, a PRSES annual planner and a toolbox talk, and finishes with a 25 question assessment and an instant certificate. It is ideal for PRSES role holders, warehouse supervisors and anyone who does the weekly checks, and volume licensing is available for whole teams.
Racking safety also connects directly to how your lift trucks are run. If you supervise the operators as well as the racking, pair it with our Level 3 Managing and Supervising MHE Operations course, and for operator training itself see our RTITB forklift and MHE training.
Questions about training your site? Call us on 020 3026 4629 and we will point you at the right course.
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