Warehouse floor marking and WHS in Queensland

Marking is a control measure

Under Queensland work health and safety law, a person conducting a business or undertaking has a duty to eliminate risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and where that is not possible, to minimise them. Powered mobile plant such as forklifts operating around people is a well recognised risk, and separating the two is the standard way of controlling it.

Floor marking is one part of that separation. It is not the only part and it is not the strongest part, but it is visible, cheap and effective, which is why an absence of it stands out.

The hierarchy matters here. Physical separation, using barriers, fencing or separate doors, is a stronger control than a painted line. Marking sits below that as an administrative and visual control. A site relying solely on paint to keep people away from forklifts has chosen a weaker control than it could have, and that is the sort of thing that gets examined after an incident.

The regulator and the guidance

In Queensland, work health and safety is administered by WorkSafe Queensland. The framework is the Work Health and Safety Act and Regulation, supported by codes of practice.

The relevant material for a warehouse generally includes guidance on traffic management in workplaces, on managing risks of plant, and on the general duty to provide a safe workplace. AS 1319 covers safety signs for the occupational environment and is the usual reference for the colour and symbol conventions used in marking.

None of this prescribes exactly where to paint a line. What it does is require you to identify the risk, decide on controls, and be able to explain your reasoning. Marking is usually part of the answer rather than the whole answer.

What a traffic management plan looks like on the floor

Most sites of any size are expected to have thought through how vehicles and pedestrians move around the workplace. Marking is how that thinking becomes visible:

• Designated pedestrian walkways from entry points to work areas, kept out of plant operating zones where possible
• Marked crossings where a walkway must cross a traffic route, so both parties expect the interaction
• Defined traffic routes with direction of travel, and one way flow where aisles are tight
• Exclusion zones around dock levellers, pits, machine swing paths and reversing areas
• Keep clear zones at switchboards, fire equipment, emergency exits, eyewash and first aid
• Loading and unloading areas defined so people know when they are in one
• Charging and refuelling zones for plant

The mistakes that undermine it

Marking that ignores how the site works. A walkway drawn on a plan that cuts across a pick face gets ignored within a week, and once people learn to ignore one line they discount the rest.

Inconsistent colour. If yellow means walkway in one aisle and storage boundary in another, the colour has stopped communicating.

Worn marking left worn. A half visible walkway is arguably worse than none, because it suggests a control exists when it no longer functions.

Old marking not removed. Superseded lines from a previous layout compete with current ones.

Marking as the only control. Where a barrier is reasonably practicable, paint alone is a weaker choice and will be seen that way.

No documentation. The colour scheme and the traffic management thinking should exist somewhere findable, not just in the head of whoever organised the marking.

When it gets looked at

Most commonly at a new tenancy, an insurer's risk survey, a customer or certification audit, a WHS review, or after an incident or near miss. The last one is the worst time to discover the walkways were never finished.

The useful move is to treat marking as part of a documented traffic management approach rather than a cosmetic job, and to keep a copy of the layout and the colour convention with your safety records.