A floor’s grip is a number — so measure it
Slip resistance is invisible, changes over time, and is the most common cause of major injury at work. Across County Durham, we put a precise, accredited figure on it.
Walk across a cathedral-city foyer on a wet morning, or a care-home corridor in Chester-le-Street, and you are trusting something you cannot see — the grip between shoe and floor. The Health and Safety Executive is clear on the stakes: slips and trips are the single most common cause of major injury in UK workplaces, and over a quarter of all non-fatal workplace accidents.
The instrument that settles the question is the pendulum. A weighted arm swings a calibrated rubber slider across the floor, reproducing a slipping heel, and records a Pendulum Test Value — the PTV. It is the method the HSE prefers, and it works in the wet, where most slips happen. We test wet and dry, in three directions.
Where floors get contaminated — kitchens, food plants, wash-down areas — a second measure, surface roughness (Rz), is taken alongside it. Together they show not just where a floor stands today, but how it is changing. We are accredited for both, and independent of anyone selling flooring or treatments, so nothing nudges the figure.