Inside phs Besafe’s commercial laundry service for protective workwear

Providing the correct protective and high visibility (HV) workwear free of charge to any employees who may be exposed to safety risks is vital for ensuring the health and safety of your workforce. In fact, this is a legal requirement, with the Personal Protective Equipment at Work Regulations (1992) stating that the industrial workwear provided by businesses and employers must be comfortable for the wearer, as well as suitable for the job and the risk at hand (for example, bad weather conditions and low light levels).

A part of this legal duty includes ensuring that the protective workwear that’s provided to employees is correctly maintained, clean workwear. According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), employers must:

• Maintain HV clothing in a clean state and in good working order. It should be checked before being given to employees.
• Provide storage facilities for clothing when not in use
• Provide adequate information, instruction and training to enable employees to use HV clothing correctly. This should include an explanation of the risks, why the clothing is needed, how and when it should be worn and supervise employees to ensure that they wear the clothing correctly and whenever it is needed.

This means that employers are legally bound to ensure all garments are repaired as and when this is required, and that industrial laundry is cleaned using the most effective and appropriate processes (and this will be dependent on the specialist properties of the workwear).

If your worker’s protective workwear is washed incorrectly, it could lose its high visibility, flame resistant or waterproof properties, and you’ll no longer be compliant with the relevant safety legislation. Regulations govern the standard of HV, and all industrial workwear must conform to the British Standard for high visibility warning clothing – BS EN 471. It is essential that any workwear cleaning that takes place maintains this standard, which is why a commercial laundry service for workwear laundry is vital..

Additionally, if items of workwear laundry that have been worn when working with silica dust (and other dangerous materials and substances) are taken home by your employees and laundered with other clothing, other members of their household will also be at risk of exposure, which could have a detrimental effect on their health

Professional workwear laundry services

Our workwear laundry services - the process

Step one: after you make an enquiry about phs Besafe’s laundry service, a member of our expert team will be in touch to discuss your requirements. Our laundry service can be used in conjunction with any of our Garment Packages, whether you take advantage of our all-inclusive Full Rental option, purchase your protective workwear outright with our Clean and Maintain package, or use our industrial laundry service as when is required on your separately rented or purchased garments.

Step two: we collect any soiled protective workwear from your site (from the pre-agreed delivery and collection point), and this will be returned on a specified day of the week, as well as within 7 days. For any items that may have been exposed to silica dust, you’ll need to ensure these are placed in one of the soluable bags provided, and place these in a dirty collector bin before they’re collected from your site by phs Besafe.

Step three: when your workwear arrives on-site, our team hand segregate the items by their specialist properties, including flame resistance and high visibility. This ensures that they’re laundered correctly, and that these properties are preserved to ensure your compliance with the relevant safety legislation, as well as your employee’s health and safety.

Step four: after segregation, we wash your protective workwear with an organic detergent that helps to prevent skin irritation to the wearer, while still being effective at removing oil and grease. Items are also laundered at 40 degrees to prevent damage to their basic construction and specialist properties, and garments in soluable bags will be washed in their bags.

Step five: to protect features such as reflective tape, zips, and logos, all protective garments are dried on a low temperature in convected tunnel dryers. Garments are then inspected to ensure no damage has come to these features, and inspection sheets will be completed to outline all checks being made to your workwear.

Step six: if any repairs and alterations need to be made to your safety workwear, these will be carefully carried out before the items are delivered back to your site.

Step seven: all items of clean workwear will be polybagged and delivered back to your site at the agreed delivery and collection point.

Reporting will be carried out throughout the laundering process, and every item will be given a unique barcode reference that includes information on the owner, employer, and the correct site to return it to. This ensures that every garment can be easily tracked, located, and referenced.

phs Besafe - the best choice for clean workwear

For more information on our protective workwear supply and rental and industrial laundry services, contact phs Besafe.