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By Larry Bakanec

Sadly, there are no magic formulas for determining the appropriate frequency of park playground safety inspections. What's reasonable for your district? Monthly? Weekly? Daily? Inspection frequency has to be determined by you and your district's needs. One suggested method to help you make this decision is based on what will give you a "quiet night's sleep." The term "quiet night's sleep" means you have done everything possible to prevent playground accidents from occurring. Also, that you have an acceptable amount of risk financing available to pay for a loss should one occur. From a risk management/loss prevention position, your goal should be to prevent accidents from occurring. To assure you reach this goal, daily playground inspections are recommended.

From a risk management/loss prevention position, your goal should be to prevent any accidents from occurring. To assure you reach this goal, daily playground inspections are recommended.

One of the most effective loss prevention tools to aid in playground inspections is documentation on safety checklists. Safety checklists provide the inspector with a guide for tracking unsafe conditions resulting from vandalism and/or general wear and tear.

Completed checklists should be filed as written documentation of your playgrounds' equipment status and conditions on any particular date. Your checklists also can be used in legal defense of playground accident claims. Be sure your completed checklists note playground location, date, time of inspection and are signed by the staff member conducting the inspection.

Playground Maintenance Checklist
If daily safety inspections aren't possible, they should be conducted on a frequent, regularly scheduled basis. Following are some of the danger points that should be checked on EACH tour:

� Visible cracks, bending, warping, rusting, or breakage of any component.

� Deformation of open hooks, shackles, rings, links, etc.

� Worn swing hangers and chains.

� Missing, damaged, or loose swing seats; heavy seats with sharp edges or corners.

� Broken supports/anchors.

� Footings exposed, cracked, loose in ground.

� Accessible sharp edges or points.

� Exposed ends of tubing that should be covered by plugs or caps.

� Protruding bolt ends that do not have smooth finished caps and covers.

� Loose bolts, nuts, etc.

� Splintered, cracked or otherwise deteriorated wood.

� Lack of lubrication on moving parts.

� Worn bearings.

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By Steven S. Plumb

We have heard and read a lot lately about playground safety, or the lack of it, in public parks and play areas. Articles describing serious injuries, enormous insurance settlements and unsafe facilities and conditions are appearing regularly. More and more, pressures from the public, the media, the legal profession, and particularly, insurance companies are forcing public agencies to re-evaluate their approach to play area maintenance. Park and recreation professionals are finding it increasingly difficult to walk the line between what is necessary to maintain safe playgrounds, and what resources are available to do the job.

A variety of solutions to the problem of play area safety are being explored on all governmental levels. Nationally, the playground safety problem is being addressed by proposing new regulations and guidelines, such as those currently under development by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) Task Force on Playground Equipment for Public Use. In Illinois, the IPRA Park and Natural Resource Management

Section has initiated a project to develop a comprehensive play area maintenance and inspection process that could be implemented by any public agency. Unfortunately, these efforts are long-term projects which will not immediately benefit managers of public play areas.

We must strike a balance between what is necessary for a safe play environment and what is practical in terms of available resources such as manpower, funding and equipment.

In the interim, insurance carriers and risk management associations like PDRMA (Park District Risk Management Association) and SRMA (Suburban Risk Management Association) have taken up the slack and are mandating play area maintenance and inspection procedures, processes, and techniques.

Is this bad? Not necessarily. No thoughtful park and recreation professional would deny the need to provide facilities which are as safe as can reasonably be expected. In basic terms, our mission is to provide FUNCTIONAL, SAFE, and AESTHETIC recreation areas and facilities for our constituents. Providing safe play areas is just as important as providing functional or attractive facilities.

The difficulty of the problem is not in deciding to develop safe play areas and facilities, but rather, in determining what is reasonable. We must strike a balance between what is necessary for a safe play environment and what is practical in terms of available resources such as manpower, funding, and equipment. Unfortunately, many of us no longer have input into this process; many decisions regarding maintenance procedures are now being made for us by loss prevention specialists and risk managers.

For example, those of us whose agencies are members of PDRMA are being evaluated by loss prevention

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� Broken or missing rails, steps, rungs, seats.

� Surfacing material worn or scattered (in landing pits, etc.)

� Hard surfaces, especially under swings, slides, etc.

� Chipped or peeling paint.

� Vandalism (broken glass, trash, etc.)

� Pinch or crush points (exposed mechanisms, junctures or moving components, e.g. axis of seesaw).

� Tripping hazards such as roots, rocks or other environmental obstacles.

� Poor drainage areas.

Damage to playground equipment MUST be repaired immediately. If you are unable to make necessary repairs immediately, I recommend the broken or damaged equipment be taken out of service. Simple actions like this go a long way toward reducing losses from playground accidents.

Playground safety checklists may be obtained from insurance companies, risk pools, the National Safety Council and the Consumer Products Safety Commission.

The next question is, "By which standard do we judge playgrounds to be safe?" Presently, no national standards for park playgrounds exist. Playground standards are being addressed by the American Standards for Testing and Measures (ASTM) and, hopefully, will be completed soon.

The expense of staff time to inspect, document and make needed repairs is minuscule in comparison with today's insurance and litigation costs.

In the meantime, the Consumer Products Safety Commission has issued safety guidelines for playgrounds. Since these guidelines are generally considered the going standard for safety, I recommend you design your playgrounds accordingly. Variations from these guidelines can put you at risk in case of playground accidents; variations that can create the basis for some plaintiffs' attorneys to claim the park district has been guilty of acts of negligence or willful and wanton misconduct.

Park districts can greatly reduce their vulnerability towards playground accidents and liability by following these steps:

1. Use the Consumer Products Safety Commission's guidelines for safe design of playgrounds.

2. Insure that commercially manufactured playground equipment adheres to the Consumer Products Safety Commission guidelines.

3. Insure that playground equipment manufacturers provide your district with a certificate of insurance � naming your district as additional insured.

4. If park district staff installs commercial playground equipment, insure it's done to the manufacturer's specifications. Have them inspect the installation and sign off that the equipment has been properly installed.

5. Never modify any playground equipment without written approval of the manufacturer.

6. Use checklists to record daily safety inspections.

Daily inspections of park playgrounds during peak use times is an essential component of any comprehensive loss prevention program. The expense of staff time to inspect, document and make needed repairs is minuscule in comparison with today's insurance and litigation costs. Can you afford the high cost of negative public relations in your community because you didn't act to prevent the preventable accident? Daily playground inspections can help you reduce, even eliminate, accidents resulting from unsafe conditions. How safe are your playground conditions right now? I hope you can sleep well, tonight.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Larry Bakanec is the Safety/Risk Manager for the Lake County Forest Preserve District in Lake Villa.

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specialists using the "Loss Prevention Program Evaluation Rating". This involves an in-depth examination of a district's safety and loss prevention program according to criteria set up by PDRMA's Loss Prevention Committee. After the 1988 evaluation of all members, the Final Report recommended that . . . "the frequency of inspections for playgrounds, parks, fencing and outdoor lighting should be increased to at least weekly during high use periods (spring and summer)."

For the Elmhurst Park District and for, I suspect, many other agencies, weekly inspections of play areas, fencing, and outdoor lighting may be desirable, but they are not reasonable. In Elmhurst, we have emphasized preventative maintenance for many years, and have developed comprehensive maintenance and inspection programs for most of our facilities. Our play area inspection program is used as a model by the PDRMA loss-prevention evaluators, and requires a full 3-4 days to complete for our 20 play areas. In past years, inspections have been completed monthly except during the winter. PDRMA requirements now would have us complete weekly inspections, which will require nearly one person full time, during "high use periods". When fencing, buildings, outdoor lighting, athletic fields, and other areas of potential concern are also considered, the impact on existing maintenance operations becomes significant.

We have begun to shift our mission from providing functional, safe and aesthetic recreation areas and facilities to "covering our agency" and "loss prevention".

If a play area inspection program is comprehensive (covers each piece of play equipment and all components of each piece), weekly inspections are totally unnecessary. S-hooks will not wear out in a week; bearings and bushings don't require weekly attention; and footings do not become hazardous overnight. Safety surfacing may need to be raked out more frequently than on a monthly basis, and broken equipment needs to be repaired immediately, but the agency should have mechanisms other than monthly inspections to identify and repair broken play equipment. In short, these items can be maintained more regularly as necessary. To do less than a comprehensive inspection is a paperwork exercise which serves only to protect the agency from lawsuits and liability claims. Completing the inspection paperwork and building a documentation file then becomes an end in itself.

The answer to the problem for the short term is to develop a comprehensive preventative maintenance program and implement regular inspections as necessary. For the long term we need to convince the insurance carriers and risk management associations to fight frivolous lawsuits and liability claims, even if the immediate cost is higher.

By mandating weekly comprehensive play area inspections, we have overreacted to a safety concern. We have begun to shift our mission from providing FUNCTIONAL, SAFE and AESTHETIC recreation areas and facilities to COVERING OUR AGENCY and LOSS PREVENTION. In our efforts to react to playground safety concerns, we should not consider safety to the exclusion of all else. Instead, we must find a balance between what is desirable and what is practical and realistic, or we will be out of the play area business.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Steve Plumb is Superintendent of Parks and Planning for the Elmhurst Park District. He is Co-Chairman of the IPRA Parks and Natural Resource Management Section Play Area Maintenance and Inspection Project committee, and a member of the ASTM Task Force on Playground Equipment for Public Use.