In this post, we walk you through the Risk Memo Personal Protective Equipment Inspection checklist template, available for free in the Risk Memo Template Library.
For many types of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment), and fall protection systems, safety programs such as regular and documented inspections are critical.
The Risk Memo PPE Inspection template is designed for a PPE inspector, often defined as a "competent person", who is responsible for fall protection equipment inspections at, for example, adventure ropes courses or for industrial rope access practitioners in general. However, it could easily be adapted to log inspections of any safety equipment, such as hard hats, protective footwear and safety harnesses at a construction site.
Whether it's the UK's Heath and Safety Executive or the US's Occupational Safety and Health Administration, all administrations recognise falls from height as one of the most likely workplace hazards to cause significant injuries and mandate that employers take the necessary precautions to prevent them. Correct maintenance and use of personal protective equipment to ensure it is in good condition is a key part of those precautions.
Keeping a record of regular PPE inspections for an individual's PPE can be managed with paper forms or spreadsheets. If you're managing tens or hundreds of items of equipment, a digitised system is worth considering. Our PPE Inspection checklist template is designed for this very purpose.
Here's a short tutorial video/walk-through video about this checklist template. Continue reading if you'd like to see how Risk Memo could be the inspection and inventory management tool you've been looking for.
For those of you who are visiting here for the first time, Risk Memo is a digital inspection and equipment inventory management platform, and this template perfectly demonstrates the two core features of our app;
These two modules integrate seamlessly to allow you to create any checklist you need and attach one or multiple items of equipment to them. Once an item of equipment is attached to a checklist, that checklist will be logged to the item's history forever. In addition, your inspectors can manage equipment details and statuses directly from the checklists to ensure everything is in sync and kept up-to-date.
Our system has the unique advantage of being completely flexible, so whether it's a visual inspection performed regularly, periodic inspections or an annual detailed thorough examination, you can design a checklist for each and attach them to the same item. Furthermore, this template, as with all of our templates, is completely customisable to enable you to comply with safety standards, for example, HSE or OSHA standards, or current requirements and industry best practices.
This template is organised into two parts,
Regarding the inspection criteria, this template follows the requirements set out by the UK's Lifting Operations and Lifting Equipment Regulations 1998 (LOLER), such as defining the name and qualifications of the inspector, equipment working load limits etc. Along with these regulatory formalities, the checklist covers preliminary checks that apply to all types of PPE, such as confirming the legibility of all serial numbers and that all items are within the manufactures specified expiration date.
We have also included item-specific inspection checklists for the most common examples of fall protection PPE, such as safety helmets, harnesses, ropes and connectors. It's these checks that can be added to or edited to suit your needs. If, for example, you want to include rescue equipment, eye protection, and respiratory protection devices, to name just a few, simply add the checks that the inspector is required to carry out to this section.
To give you an idea of these item-specific checks, for safety harness checks the template asks the inspector to respond with "Checked" to the following:
Pro tip: If you have common areas of wear and tear on a particular type of PPE, adding instructions and images to the checklist to remind inspectors to pay special attention to those parts is the best way to get ahead of potential hazards.
Once the inspector has confirmed that they have performed the inspection as per the item-specific checks defined on page one, page two highlights any notable inspections, for example, items that have failed their inspection. We do this using a repeating section - a dynamic section of the checklist that can be repeated for each failed or noteworthy inspection. The ability to dynamically add a relevant section to an inspection report is a key advantage of digital checklists over paper forms.
In this dynamic section, we ask the inspector to provide more details on the failed or noteworthy item of PPE, such as a description of the issue and/or evidence images. We also prompt the user to create an action if further action is required. An "action" here refers to our built-in task management system.
The last page of this template is a register of the items that have been inspected. To keep this list easy to read, yet still capable of containing tens or even hundreds of items, we've created a repeating section to add batches of PPE, for example, all the harnesses, then ropes, lanyards, etc. Attaching the items to the checklist will log the inspection in each item's history.
Along with our tagging system, which makes it extremely easy to find and attach the correct items to the checklist, the inspector can view, filter and edit these items within the checklist itself, as well as perform bulk equipment status updates.
And that's it! With this checklist, you and your team can perform appropriate PPE inspections, ensuring that proper care has been taken and documented throughout the useful life of your equipment.
First, you will need a Risk Memo account, check out our pricing by clicking here, then once you've signed up, head to the Template Library and click copy. That's it! Once it's copied to your account you can edit it to suit your needs.
If you need any help getting set up, click the chat widget here or in the app to contact our support team.
Thank you for checking us out!
Stay safe,
Alistair Scott, Risk Memo Co-Founder & CEO
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