Spillard News

Over the last decade, plant makers have commendably made great strides in providing the operators of their creations with ever better
visibility. But there can still be blind spots beside and behind many machines and these could result in potentially serious accidents on site.
In recent years, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has expressed particular concern about the number of personal injury accidents caused by reversing plant. It particularly highlighted problems associated with dumptrucks in quarries and telehandlers on construction sites. The use of CCTV has been officially adopted as the solution to the former situation whilst, increasingly, the fitment of extra mirrors has been seen as providing a suitable ‘cure’ in the latter case.
Given the raft of legislation and standards that now seem to affect machine visibility issues, it is not always as easy as it should be to work out what might need to be done to make improvements to specific machines. But one company has made a name for itself as a special provider of visibility assessments and the means to minimise any blind spots thereby identified.

Plant consultancy

The company in question is Spillard Safety Systems Ltd of Gailey in Staffordshire whose somewhat accidental entry into this sector began back in the early 1990s. Founder Vic Spillard used his extensive plant knowl¬edge to carry out consultancy work and a safety project Wimpey Mining led to trials of both reversing cameras and convex mirrors on large dumptrucks.
Interest in reversing aids increased and, after Vic’s son Pete joined the business, an official launch of Spillard’s new AIIRoundVision range took place at the Hillhead Quarry Plant Exhibition in 1995. Subsequently, increased HSE interest in the fitting of convex mirrors prompted Spillard’s to review its product range.
The product now sold by Spillard stems from a sighting by Pete of a convex mirror on a yellow school bus in New York during a visit in 1998. The mirror’s maker was a company called Mirrorlite and having decided the product provided better vision, Spillard became the European importer.
The latest generation of AIIRoundVision mirrors from Spillard is made from aluminiumised vacuum coated shatterproof acrylic with an abrasion resistant coating. These mirrors utilise a non-uniform radius profile designed to maximise the field of view whilst minimising distortion.
The range of AIIRoundVision convex mirrors includes oval elliptical and quad ra-spherical designs for mounting in a variety of different positions on machines. Mirrors can be supplied with integrated heaters so that vision can be maintained during icy weather.
Spillards move into fitting its AIIRoundVision convex mirrors to telehandlers came through Wimpey Homes. And, as other prominent telescopic handler users sought to minimise the risks of using these popular machines on congested sites, Spillards pioneering work paid dividends and it gained a significant slice of the increasing market for extra mirrors.

Exhibition boost

The growth in extra mirrors being fitted onto telehandlers was fuelled by the HSE taking a specific interest in these machines following a survey it made of forklift accidents in the period 1997-2001. Subsequently, the HSE showed Spillard mirrors at an SED exhibition as an example of one way of improving all-round visibility and thereby reducing the risk of people being struck by the machines.
Spillard Safety Systems also used shows like SED to promote not only the features of its mirrors but also its ability to carry out site assessments of specific machines. Pete Spillard and his team have utilised their in-depth practical knowledge to provide visibility risk assessments and to advise how additional mirrors might reduce any blind spots which might be discovered.
To see how this service works in practice, I travelled to a Fairclough Homes site near Bradford to witness a demonstration of a visibility assessment on a telehandler hired in from Flannery Forktrucks. Safety is a very important issue for both Fairclough Homes and its telehandler supplier. They have clearly welcomed the ability of Spillard Safety Systems to conduct visibility risk assessments and advise on the fitting of extra mirrors.

Top priorities

The safety department of Fairclough Homes has now worked with Spillard Safety systems for over three years and it calls in Pete Spillard to carry out a visibility risk assessment every time a new type of telehandler is hired in. Flannery Forktrucks is pleased to accept Spillard’s recommendations as its brochure states that “reverse waning and rear vision are both top priorities.’
General Manger Andrew Gaunt of Flannery Forktrucks says that all our telehandlers are fitted with high visibility chevrons, AIIRoundVision mirrors and backup warning alarms. This combination of features is a major factor in reducing on-site accidents.”
The machine, which came under the scrutiny of Pete Spillard and his colleague Peter Welsh for my benefit, was a modern JCB 532-120. This side-engined, low boom design is typical of the machines used on many sites these days. According to Pete Spillard, all have some visibility blind spots which can be reduced by the strategic use of extra convex mirrors.
To carry out his tests, Pete Spillard assesses how easy it is for him to see a 1.0m high object moved around whilst he sits in the operator’s seat (whilst wearing the seat belt). He is 1.85m high and he conducts all the visual sight tests himself so as to maintain consistency of testing.
The use of a 1.0m high object stems from the 1.0m by 1.0m visibility recommendation increasingly being applied to construction equipment. The HSE appears to be endorsing this criterion in quarries for its Quarry Fact File dated June 2005 states, “Convex mirrors and CCTV should be fitted to all quarry earthmoving vehicles so that the drive can see 1.0m out and 1.0m up all around the vehicle.” This recommendation has apparently been adopted by the HSE backed Quarries National Joint Advisory Committee (QNJAC).
The HSE also appears to be promoting the 1 m by 1 m rule of thumb for telehandlers used on construction sites. After I asked for telehandler visibility requirements on the HSE stand at the Saltex exhibition on the 6th September, I was told I would be sent the information as a matter of priority. What arrived on the 12th October form the Basingstoke office of the HSE was a paper dated 20th November 2003 which states that it “addresses the current position concerning driver visibility of earthmoving equipment lift trucks and describes HSE activity.”
This HSE paper states that the appropriate safe management of site transport is deemed to be a key requirement to ensure a safe site. Published guidance is provided by HSG 144 ‘safe use of vehicles on construction sites.’ As a rough ‘rule of thumb’, driver vision should be 1.0×1.0m around a machine where there is a risk from inadequate driver vision (i.e. the driver should be able to see points that are one metre from the vehicle and one metre above ground level, subject to the ‘risk’ caveat).
So, with the machine’s forks placed 500mm above the ground, Pete Welsh used a large 1.0m high yellow cone to map out the positions from which its top could be seen by Pete Spillard from the operator’s seat. This data is used by Spillard Safety Systems to provide a computer generated plant view of the machine as a Machine Visibility Diagram with the area of blind spot highlighted in purple.
The Spillard team then proceeded to fit the telehandler with one of their oval elliptical mirrors on the existing bracket on the front offside of the machine and a quadra-spherical mirror on a bracket at the rear. Rather than being a full convex mirror, this quarda-spherical design has been produced specially to reduce glare from the sun and from the strobe type beacons increasingly being fitted to construction plant.
Once the mirrors were in place they were then adjusted using the yellow cone to minimise the blind spots. The improved area of vision can be seen from the resulting green coloured areas on the accompanying Machine Visibility Diagram.
The green shading reveals a significant improvement and, as can be seen from the free database of other visibility assessments on the Spillard website (www.allroundvision.com)  it is typical of what can be achieved with many other makers and models of telehandler. However, it should be noted that the front offside mirror bracket on this particular telehandler was slightly bent so these are not the optimum results for this type of machine.

Free Metre Stick

To help telehandler owners and users make their own initial visibility assessments, Spillard Safety Systems can provide a free Metre Stick. This Stick can give an indication of the need for extra visibility aids and/or the effectiveness of existing mirrors.
Pete Spillard says these additional mirrors provide a cost effective way of reducing the blind spots associated with modern telehandlers of whatever make. He accepts that ‘mirrors are not the be all and end all solution to enhanced driver visibility and he accepts that in some instances – on the rear of zero tail swing excavators for example, they are not needed.
He also accepts that vibration can serve to blur an image but because all site workers should be wearing high viz jackets it should be possible to spot them. “You don’t need to recognise a guy to see he is there!”
The HSE has recently again highlighted the dangers of pedestrians on construction sites and waste handling areas being stuck and killed by telehandlers. Whilst still advocating the provision of additional visibility aids such as mirrors as one way to improve telehandler safety, the HSE is still calling for more research into their suitability. This work needs to be given high priority so that machine makers and users can be given unequivocal guidance in this live threatening matter.
Meanwhile, Spillard Safety Systems continues to be proactive. It can now assume complete legal responsibility for a customer’s machine visibility assessments by signing off the whole package.