Prepare for the wrath of winter
As the North West is set to be hit by potential winter storms, we want to provide you with some top tips in preparing your external office grounds for the weather ahead. It’s easy for employees to have an accident in a car park or walkway due to rain, snow or ice, so we want to help you prepare for the oncoming weather and hopefully, avoid, any unnecessary accidents.
Our experts
Here at Solutions SK we have a dedicated team who take care of roads and office grounds in any environment. Whilst for us, the winter season runs from November to April, the core period is December through February and for you – this is the time you need to think about protecting your external grounds and in doing so, protecting your employees from unnecessary accidents.
Snow is on the way
Looking at this week alone, depending on which media you have heard or read we could be expecting up to 20cm of snow on higher ground and between five and 10cm anywhere else. In fact, according to the Manchester Evening News, “Thunder Snow” is on its way.
What’s Thunder Snow?
Thunder snow is quite rare and is a snow storm accompanied with thunder and lightning, Wikipedia has some useful information on Thunderstorms and if you want to check out what they look like in real life scenarios, see the you tube video below taken by American meteorologist, Jim Cantore who is best known as an on-air personality for The Weather Channel.
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You might want to prepare communications to your employees about what they can expect if we do experience extreme snow or thunder snow.
Preparing to protect the roads of Stockport in the snow and thundersnow
Our team receive detailed weather reports each morning and based on those, agree action required. This can be anything from a precautionary grit when frost is expected to snow grits and ploughing when the forecast warns of accumulations of snow.
Looking after your business grounds to ensure your employees drive safely
Our team work with many businesses to ensure their grounds are safe and weather prepared – particularly for car parks and walkways at this time of year.
This is carried out by our commercial gritting team who use specialised equipment enabling us to get to areas not accessible by our larger highways gritting fleet. If this is something which would benefit your business grounds, we would be happy to help. In the meantime, here are our top five tips which you can do, to prepare your external working environment for the cold and challenging weather ahead.
Top tips to help you and your employees prepare
- Ensure your grit bins are full.
- Grit walkways, car parks and opening roads before ice forms or snow falls.
- Keep your employees informed of the precautionary action you have taken.
- Clear any lying snow before re-treating – salt won’t remove snow.
- Remind employees to allow for extra time on any journey’s they need to take.
For information about our commercial grounds services click here
By John White, Assistant Operations Manager, Streetcare and Parks.
