Our Compliance Team here at Heightsafe Systems have recently been to Chester Zoo enjoying a beautiful day out testing and getting a little closer to the animals than anticipated!
Our team were working on Monsoon Forest, Chester Zoo’s recently completed £40m Islands Project, the largest indoor Zoo exhibit in the UK, also landing Chester the accolade of number one Zoo in the country. Five years in the making, Monsoon Forest opened it’s doors to the public in 2015. Monsoon Forest houses the Sulawesi Crested Macaque, Rhinoceros Hornbill, Asian Forest Tortoise and the Tentacled Snake as well as Frank and Frankie, a pair of Sunda Gharial Crocodiles.
This really is the closest you can come to the forests of South East Asia short of actually going there yourself. The building was designed to allow Monsoon Forest to support its own climate, stifling humidity and warm temperatures make the animals housed here feel right at home, not so much the same for our team though!
The exhibit has numerous safety line systems running through its interior, allowing safe work at height for employees who need to access difficult parts. The last thing you would want whilst going about your daily duties is falling into the Crocodile enclosure!
Adjoining Monsoon Forest our operatives tested a 15 metre access ladder complete with fall arrest track, needless to say it’s a good job they don’t have a fear of heights. Once we tested this Chris hooked on with his PPE kit and up he went without any hesitation. This was used to access the top of a metal netted cage for the chimps to have a play outside. You can see from the photo, there are ropes tied to the rungs of the cage for the chimps to climb. Periodically these require changing, therefore the Zoo staff need to safely access the top of the cage and hook onto the horizontal safety line running to the middle pole, fantastic views, but certainly not for the faint hearted!
Following on from the testing our team spent the afternoon surveying the rest of the Zoo. Heightsafe Facilities Management have an incredible online portal, onto which we log our client’s various assets with their safety certificates. The portal will then notify the client when certain assets need testing, logging on remotely to speak to our team who will then arrange to come out and do the re-testing.
For more information please contact our team on: +44 (0)20 3819 7199.