This post will show Six of the Many Ways to Make Your Facility Safer with Panel Built.

In the beginning, Panel Built only manufactured panelized buildings as temporary spaces in manufacturing and warehousing spaces.  However, to better serve our customers, Panel Built developed our line of slide-in-place steel barrier railing systems.  Panel Built's standard barrier rail system is formed from a series of 4" x 4" x 3/16" structural steel columns and 11-gauge steel railing.  The 42" barrier posts have side-mounted pockets to slide in the railing. In addition, with removable railing, barrier sections can be removed to create different layouts or egress points. 

Initially, the barrier railing was designed to help our customers protect their new modular buildings and mezzanines.  However, our barrier rail system has been used in a variety of safety applications around a warehouse.  

To maximize the usable space in their facilities, many warehouses use a lot of raised platforms, catwalks, and offices. By installing these platforms, warehouses increase their storage and workspace areas; however, elevating these spaces creates an inherent fall hazard.  

Of course, these spaces have barrier railing of their own to help mitigate this risk! 

Panel Built offers a wide range of guard railing (hand railing) options to help service a wide range of applications.  In fact, the barrier may have to meet specific requirements depending on who is using the structure. For example, a catwalk going through a warehouse may have relatively relaxed guard railing requirements because only trained employees of the company use the pathway.  However, suppose the same structure was being used as a public walkway through a building. In that case, much higher safety requirements will most likely be needed. 

An essential aspect of employee safety is the overall security and risk level of your business.  And for companies, security needs are best addressed before they are needed.  Unfortunately, many companies can become the target of criminals, whether in a robbery or a malicious attack.  To actively address these concerns, many company headquarters and warehouses install a guard house at the entrances of their facility.  

Panel Built guard houses are fully premanufactured at our specialized modular construction facility.  Upon delivery to your facility, they are ready to act as an access control point for your facility.  Companies can ensure that only authorized personnel enters their property by actively stopping and verifying all incoming traffic.  Further, the simple presence of a guard house at the front of a facility acts as a deterrent against criminal activity because it shows that your company considers security a priority. 

To further bolster your company security, attaching a prefabricated mantrap to the entrance of your facility adds an additional layer of protection.  If the initial access control point at the front of your facility is bypassed, mantraps help ensure unauthorized personnel cannot access the interior of your facility.  These mantraps, or security vestibules, use a set of 2 locking doors to permit access to authorized employees and catch unauthorized trespassers.  If one door is open, the other must be closed.  This system helps reduce the chance of 'piggybacking', when a trespasser follows behind another person into a restricted area. 

Like all of Panel Built's products, our security vestibules are prefabricated, delivered to your facility ready for installation.  Using a heavy-duty steel frame design, Panel Built can form bullet-resistant mantraps for high threat level facilities.  Panel Built ballistic rated structures are manufactured to strict UL-752, NIJ, & STANAG bullet resistance levels. Depending on the facility's security needs, the mantrap can be outfitted with number pads, keyfobs, or biometric scanners to identify users.  The highest level facilities use different ID types at each door.  If the ID is negative, the trespasser is stuck in the mantrap until law enforcement arrives. 

Panel Built customers can double the storage space in their facility thanks to their bolt-together mezzanine systems.  These mezzanines have our protective handrail along any non-walled side.  However, they still need a way to load and unload the mezzanine with equipment and materials.  To solve this problem, Panel Built has developed a line of mezzanine gates to load and unload the platform safely.  

The primary objective for each gate design is for it to be safely opened or closed.  For example, take our pivot gate design; the gate has one side that is always up and one that is always down.  But no matter which side is open, the mezzanine is closed off. So, when the employee lifts the gate to retrieve the newly loaded materials, the other side of the gate lowers, reducing the risk of a fall hazard.