Legal & Insurance Floor Accident Investigation

Slip testing services in Australia audit floor surfaces to the recommended slip resistance methods used in AS 4586-2013 Slip resistance classifications of new pedestrian surface materials which is used per installation on material in laboratory testing conditions, AS 4663-2013 Slip Resistance Measurements of Existing Pedestrian surfaces is used for in-situ testing and for specific location recommendations we refer to the Australian Standards Handbook SA HB 198:2014 Guide to the specification and testing of slip resistance of pedestrian surfaces.

These tests are used to determine whether the floor surface is suitable for pedestrian traffic and are very important in the case of litigation in heavy pedestrian traffic locations such as industrial, commercial and retail.

In the case of a slip and fall the issue with the floor surface if any can be determined if the test is carried out on the day of the incident or the day after if the surface where the incident occurred is barricaded, why I say this is because some floor let’s say shopping centres with sealed terrazzo floors are regularly recoated with sealant and the floor is also stripped and sealed periodically, so if the floor is tested after the nightly cleaning auto scrubbed then all the evidence is washed away and will become extremely hard to identify the issue. The normal maintenance of terrazzo floors is to deep scrub and recoat on a quarterly bases and to strip and reseal the terrazzo ever 12 months, this is because the sealant will exfoliate with constant pedestrian traffic and is visible in areas such as entries.

So, if a litigation case occurs in let’s say in a shopping centre environment and then the plaintiffs legal team requests a slip test to be carried out after 3 years from the time of the incident occurring, they must realise that the floor surface has significantly changed from the time that the incident occurred, over the 3 year period the floor surface had changed at least 12 times depending if the floor surface had been properly maintained.

One of many examples, we were slip testing floor surface in Coffs Harbour and I received a phone call from an operations manager in Brisbane requesting a slip test because of a slip fall incident at his shopping centre and the shopper was taken away by ambulance, I informed the operation manager that it would take us 4 hours to get to the shopping centre and he agreed, so then I asked him to barricade the exact area where the incident occurred, we arrived at the shopping centre at 9pm and walk to the area where the incident occurred, we first tested the terrazzo floor 10m away from the surface which indicated the correct slip resistance required for that specific location.

By this time we arrived the shopping centre was closed to the public and the cleaning staff were getting prepared to clean the shopping centre, the auto scrubber drive asked me what I was doing and after a quick discussion I asked him whether the cleaning solution in the auto scrubber had been changed, he replied that he had been using the same chemical for 4 years. I then went over to the location where the incident occurred and prepared my equipment to test the surface where the incident occurred, the reading from my equipment indicated that the surface was very dangerous with 0 reading on the equipment.

While testing the area where the incident occurred security arrived to see what I was doing on site and I informed him that the operation manager had organised the slip test because of the incident that occurred during the day, while we were talking I ask security whether any special cleaning or shop fitouts had occurred around the area yesterday evening, he replied that the tenant in front of the contaminated area was cleaning his external wall tiles, he used a mixture of water and methylated spirits to clean the tiles which was okay because it would evaporate quickly, then he stood back from his tenancy and sprayed the external tiled surface with a can of silicon spray which probably distributed the silicon mist over the terrazzo floor.

We arrived back at the office at 11pm and completed the slip test report and a report of the discussion with security I then organised a courier for 8am the next morning to deliver the report to the operation manager at the shopping centre and he then forwarded the incident report and the slip test report to the tenant, if this surface had been auto scrubbed during the evening any evidence would have been cleaned from the terrazzo floor and any litigation would have been served to either the cleaning company or centre Management.