Playground Maintenance

Worn upholstery exposes hard timber edges

Worn pipe foam exposes steel

Contact us to find out about how Playtec can assist with you with maintaining your playground.

It is recommended that operators create their own site specific documentation to inspect the playground on a daily basis. This documentation should, as a minimum, incorporate a safety checklist, logged inspection records and a log of  maintenance work that is undertaken.

Australian Standards and WHS Legislation are very explicit about an operator’s obligations to maintain an indoor playground and require inspection & maintenance works to be undertaken by ‘competent persons’.

Maintenance versus Preventative Maintenance

For obvious reasons, the importance of maintenance to keep a playground safe and in good working order cannot be over stated. However there is a difference between ‘Maintenance’ and ‘Preventative Maintenance’.

Some operators undertake maintenance only when something breaks; this is “reactive” maintenance. A reactive approach to maintenance will get operators through some issues however the urgent nature of these repairs will result in higher costs and the overall appearance of the playground will deteriorate. Furthermore, reactive maintenance may involve operators not keeping compliant log book servicing and as a result expose themselves to higher levels of litigious risk in the event of an incident.

Loose pipe foam exposes steel

Unstitched webbing creates entrapments

So an operator has three options in regards to the maintenance of an indoor playground, being:

• Purchase parts when needed and carry out the maintenance yourself.

While Playtec can provide operators with quality Australian Made parts, the installation of those parts is only as good as the application and experience of individuals carrying out the repair. Australian Standards make the point that the people undertaking the maintenance need to be ‘competent persons’ with “trade qualifications relevant to the work being carried out”

Click here to find out more about Playtec’s Australian Made playground parts.

• Call technicians to fix existing problems.

Playtec will always do its best to repair existing problems as soon as possible. With reasonable lead times, we can manufacture and install the parts required for almost any playground issue. However, we may not be able to get to site and, depending on our commitments, it may take us weeks to attend.

Playtec does not recommend this option as when there is a failure and it can not be attended to for some time, the playground may need to be closed down and any repair will be rushed and therefore expensive. More importantly, it is a reactionary policy and therefore carries higher litigious risk.

Contact us to find out about how Playtec can assist with you with maintaining your playground.

• A Preventative Maintenance (PM) & Big Clean (BC) Program

This is our recommended option and works best because issues of wear and tear are attended to on a ‘preventative’ rather ‘reactionary’ basis. It minimises the likelihood of part failure necessitating expensive emergency call outs and importantly complies with Australian Standards and WHS Legislation requirements.

Playtec offers a Preventative Maintenance Program (PM Program) which schedules maintenance for participants, provides a Big Clean service to clean those hard to access areas of a playground and supplies and installs parts on a discounted basis. The PM Program also provides other important benefits such as:

• Records of compliance meeting Australian Standards and WHS Legislation in regards to log book servicing & inspection by competent technicians

• Documenting evidence should there ever be an incident resulting in injury, of the operator’s formal playground risk management policy.
  

• Managing public perception and mitigating negative social media risk
  

Even though the PM Program is not a long term commitment, clients continue to participate, not because they are contractually bound, but as they are provided with a service that manages the risk, be it operating, compliance or public perception.

For the level of service a PM Program provides it is not expensive. If you are interested in considering a Preventative Maintenance arrangement with Playtec, let me know and I can arrange for a no obligation quotation proposal to be sent to you.

‍Contact us to find out more about participating in Playtec’s PM Program.