Emergency slip test callout to Shopping Centre

One Thursday morning a couple of years ago I was called out to a Major Shopping Centre in Brisbane by the cleaning company to inspect and slip test a terrazzo floor in their food court precinct, I arrived at 10am and was met by the representative of the cleaning company and the operations manager from Centre Management, I was then told that they were having slips and fall on the terrazzo floor and we walked to the area where the incidents occurred, I inspected the area and couldn’t find any abnormality in the approximate location, I asked whether I could view the CCTV footage of the incident so I could find the exact location where the incident occurred, after viewing the CCTV footage we went back to the area where the incident occurred, I then asked the cleaning companies representative whether the chemical that they use to auto scrub the terrazzo floor nightly had been changed and was told that they have been using the same neutral cleaner chemical for a few years, I then asked if I could inspect the auto scrubber and was taken into the cleaners room to check the auto scrubber, the reason for inspecting the auto scrubber was to check if the vacuum system was working correctly and picking all the waste water from the terrazzo floor during the nightly deep scrub, the cleaning company representative informed me that the equipment is serviced and check on a periodical bases.

I also asked the operations manager whether any shop fit-outs had been carried out over the past few days and was advised that nothing had been carried out in the food court for months, we then made our way back to the exact location we view on the CCTV footage where the last incident occurred in the food court precinct to discuss the type of slip test that we will be performing on the terrazzo floor, while we were talking I notice that an employee from the kebab shop tenancy lifted a section of the bench top to exit the tenancy and then walk across the main area of the food court precinct towards the cinemas, then 5 minutes later he made his way back to the kebab tenancy lifted the section of the bench and started serving customers, I then made my way to the terrazzo floor area that the tenant had walked over and stooped down to my knees to inspect the surface and noticed that the area had a type of glossy substance on the surface much glossier than the remainder of the terrazzo floor and virtually invisible if you were walking in the area, I asked whether the cleaning company representative could make arrangements for a cleaner to come to our location with a mop and a bucket with hot water with neutral cleaning chemical and while the cleaner was making here way to our location I visited the chemist in the centre to purchase talcum powder.

When the cleaner arrived 4 caution signs were placed in the area I inspected and I sprinkled talcum powder over the area I noticed and within seconds the foot print appeared on the surface, I then gave the talcum powder to the cleaner and instructed the cleaner to use the talcum powder in a straight line from the kebab shop to the cinemas and mop all the residue from the surface, the operations manager asked what could be done to stop this from reoccurring and I recommended mats to be placed at the entry of the tenancy with a cleaning procedure for the mats so the mats wouldn’t be clogged up with contaminant, the operations manager went over to the tenancy and spoke with the lessee to discussed our findings, the tenant remarked that the centres public toilets were too far away to walk and leave his tenancy unattended, if the lessee and employees had walked through the shopping centre to use the public toilets with grease and oil on their foot wear it may have caused more slips and falls and would also may have been harder to locate the foot prints in a larger area.