Inflatable Inspection Day 2019
Today was annual inspection day for Elliott's Bouncy Castle Hire! Firstly, we'd like to share that every single one of the inspections passed with not a single advisory or note made on any of them. This is largely due to the fact that if we ever see any issue, we have them fixed or changed immediately, rather than wait till they're inspected.
It was a very long and tiring day. Every single one of our bouncy castles had to be taken to a hall in Bexleyheath (we could do it outside, but it's windy, raining and miserably cold) which takes several trips, then they all have to be un-rolled, inflatabled, inspected by the independant HSE recognised inspector, then we have to roll them up again and pack them away, making several trips back to drop them all off.
These inspections are voluntary. There is no regulating body that enforces us to have these inspections, but we choose to have them performed. We also choose to have all applicable inflatables PIPA tagged (which is a scheme where the inspection reports are held online) so that members of the public can see that the inflatable has been inspected by a HSE recognised and industry professional. We display these reports on our website, too! We like to be transparent in this regard so that we can ensure full trust of our customers.
Most customers will not know what a PIPA tag means or what it shows, but schools increasinly ask for these tag numbers and are a little bit more aware of them. We like to have these readily to hand so we can show we are fully compliant and reassure people that they're in safe hands.
Technicaly, you do not have to have a HSE recognised inspector perform this and many companies choose not to. PIPA isn't law, but it does show very clearly that the inflatables meet regulations and we believe it's essential to be able to demonstrate that we take every safey seriously.
Not all inflatables fall under the PIPA scheme. For example, you can't PIPA tag a ball pool or a soft play set. You can't PIPA tag a hoopla or a grotto, but you can PIPA tag bouncy castles, fun-runs, disco domes and slides! Where they fall under this scheme, we have every single one inspected. For us, that amounted to 25 which was a huge amount for one day and a single inspector. However, it helped that we was in a warm and dry hall all day and we had two staff rolling out the bouncy castles and packing them away, allowing the inspector to get on and focus on the inflatable inspections only.
Whatever equipment doesn't fall under the PIPA scheme we also have inspected, but this falls on another day and there are sadly not online reports for this, only paper certificates.
The day comes at great cost to our company, the staff wages, the hall hire plus the day rate of the inspector and additonal cost per unit inspected. However, we personally believe that this cost is insignificant compared to our customers safety. We specialise in children's equipment and bouncy castles, so in almost every single case we're not just hiring to our customers, but really their children and no one can put a price on that.
The inspection ensures that the castles are fit for purpose and safe. The inspection doesn't account for safe set-ups and knowledge of how to make a set-up safe, but we also have all staff members RPII trained and certied to do just that! When we safety "safety first" or you here people pay lip service to "safety is our number one priority", we don't just use that as a tag line, we really do commit to it.
Here's a little video below of the day!
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