Philip Ross, commercial director at door, door hardware, and door safety specialist, Safehinge, explains – including via a look at a recent installation for Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust – how the company ensures that installations at client sites progress with the minimum disruption, thanks to ‘a meticulous and methodical design, testing, prototyping, and planning process’, and close working partnerships with service-users and staff.
A market-leader in door safety, at Safehinge we created our first hinge guard product in 2005 in response to reports that 30,000 children were being injured every year when their fingers became trapped in doors. This cost the NHS an estimated £200 million. This single product, which helped to revolutionise safety in schools, retail outlets, leisure facilities, and healthcare facilities, kicked off a trend that has since seen us solve many other key issues facing modern door design, particularly within specialist settings such as mental healthcare facilities.
Central to our ethos as a company is a thorough design process and easy on-site installation – the springboard for all of our work. It is by harnessing this methodical design, testing, prototyping, and planning process that we, as a manufacturer, can minimise the disruption during installations in live environments – making life easier and safer for service-users, staff, and installation teams. After all, in mental healthcare settings, time is crucial, so our products need to be easy to fit and to operate.
When we start designing a product, we don’t just involve the Trust or facility’s estates department, but also clinical staff, and, where possible, service-users – the people who will be using our products. It’s about how we can work with them to create something that blends in, but also addresses the issues they have. Overseeing much of this work is our dedicated team of product designers, which includes Jeremy Young. He explains: “The relationship we have with our clients and installers is absolutely vital to us. One of the primary tasks carried out during the development phase is making sure that as much as possible can be pre-fitted offsite – all the ironmongery such as handles and vision panels. Avoiding having to carry out this work on site helps with fire compliance, as you are not making changes to the doors in situ, and it makes the doors harder to tamper with. It also makes it much quicker to install them on site. Installers can just get on with the job without having to worry about anything else.”
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