2017, September

With incidents like the tragic fire at Grenfell Tower still fresh in the mind, the need for fire risk assessments to protect a workplace has never been more pertinent.

A fire risk assessment is required by law. It can be carried out by a competent member of the business with sufficient training and experience, including knowledge of PAS 79, which sets out how to undertake a fire risk assessment. There are a number of companies that will carry out the assessment for you.

There are two basic par...

New developments in drone technology could help locate items stored in warehouses.

Warehouses that keep a large range of items on pallet racking systems often use radio frequency identity tags (RFID) tags that broadcast their identity to scanners. These tags require no battery power and are inexpensive to produce. However, the system is not always efficient.

In the USA, retailer Walmart estimates that it has lost $3bn due to a mismatch between inventory records and actual stock numbers. Wor...

An innovative student has come up with a product called ‘Rest’ that uses backrests from office chairs to make backpacks.

Most businesses throw away their old office chairs when they wear out, as most recycling schemes cannot use them. It is estimated that over 800,000 office chairs are thrown away by UK businesses each year.

To combat this waste, a Product Design student at Birmingham City University, Thomas Howell-Jones, collected several old office chairs and decided that he would find a pu...

Residents in Gloucester are encouraged to separate their rubbish into various recycling bins, so it seems a reasonable assumption that all the rubbish would be kept separate when it was collected. A resident from the suburb of Elmridge, however, spotted that when the rubbish truck arrived outside their home, all the rubbish from the various recycling bins was tipped into the same area in the rubbish truck.

Gloucester Council has confirmed that this was happening, but says it is not a mistake. T...