Fewer accidents in everyday school life: The BFU knows how! (Part 2)
The safety and minimization of accident risks is one of the key tasks of Jürg Dreier, BFU representative of the municipality and school caretaker at the Eich primary school and kindergarten in Kleinlützel. His school building is full of activity every day. It is almost impossible for teachers, secretaries or even himself to constantly monitor all stairs, doors and windows as a possible source of injury. In the second part of our blog series, he explains the advantages of innovative security and locking systems for better protection, especially for younger children, and what modernizations are planned in Kleinlützl.
What technical possibilities are there to effectively prevent accidents in everyday school life?
An important option is to invest in secure and barrier-free locking systems. Younger children in particular usually have other things on their minds in their everyday school life and therefore barely perceive possible sources of danger. This is why it is very important for me that the doors are easy to open for our children and people with reduced mobility.
That’s why I am strongly committed, among other things, to successively converting to easy opening doors in Kleinlützel for the smallest and most mobility-impaired people on our premises. Ideally, these should be intelligent systems that simultaneously meet all requirements for modern escape and rescue route technology. Because pupils sometimes want to use the escape route doors for unnoticed escapes. However, if these doors have a time-delayed opening system that triggers an alarm before opening, this risk can be significantly reduced – yet the escape routes remain freely accessible and secured.
When it comes to doors and children, you often think of trapped or crushed fingers. How can this risk be reduced in everyday school life?
Fortunately, so far we have been spared such painful accident scenarios in the Eich primary school and kindergarten. This does not mean that there is no room for improvement here. Specialist manufacturers such as ASSA ABLOY, for example, offer certified finger protection programs for schools and daycare centers. This includes finger protection blinds and cover profiles with which potential trapping points on secondary closing edges of doors can be secured extremely effectively.
Where else do you see a need for further action or what modernization measures are currently being planned by the municipality of Kleinlützel?
Our entire locking technology is to be modernized this year and converted to an electronic system solution. All municipal buildings – not just our school – will then be combined in a single system. This will significantly reduce the previous organizational effort and reduce our workload because the management of the locking system is then regulated very conveniently via a software manager. This can also be used to set up temporary access authorizations, for example for associations or groups of tenants. With an electronic locking system, lost or stolen keys can also be easily blocked or simply deprogrammed – without replacing the entire system. So it is fair to say that I am already looking forward to the day when the local council gives its go-ahead for the planned modernization.