The Facility Safety Checklist I Swear By: Stair Treads, Window Film, and the Vinegar Trick

If you're the person who ends up managing facility repairs even though your title says administrative assistant or office coordinator, this article is for you. I've handled purchasing for our company since 2020—about $200,000 in annual spend across 40 vendors. I'm not an engineer. I'm the person who gets called when something breaks, and I've learned to turn every problem into a checklist.

This checklist started with a phone call from our Holbrook auto parts distribution center. A warehouse employee caught the edge of a worn stair tread and fell hard. He wasn't seriously hurt (thankfully), but it made me rethink how we approach facility safety. Here are the six steps I now use every time a facility issue lands on my desk.

Step 1: Document the Problem Before You Call Anyone

You can't fix what you haven't inspected. When I got to Holbrook, I walked every stairwell with a notebook and wrote down what I saw:

• Worn or rounded stair nosing
• Inconsistent step heights (a classic trip hazard)
• Missing or wobbly handrail brackets
• Slippery surfaces near the loading dock

I also took photos and measured stair width and tread depth. That took 90 minutes and saved me multiple phone calls later—I had real numbers when I asked for quotes.

Honestly, I assumed I knew that building. I'd walked those stairs a dozen times. But when I actually inspected them, I found two staircases with the same worn condition. Don't rely on memory. Document everything.

Step 2: Match the Product to the Real-World Load

Searching "stair tread" brings up hundreds of suppliers. I almost made a costly mistake here: I found a fiberglass tread online for about $300 less than what we'd normally source. The upside was obvious savings. The risk was that the product couldn't handle forklift traffic and heavy boots at a parts warehouse. I kept asking myself—is $300 in savings worth a potential second injury and an OSHA citation? No.

I ordered stair treads from McNichols for our Holbrook auto parts facility. Specifically, the MCNICHOLS stair tread product line. What sold me: their site lists load ratings and material specs in plain numbers, which made it easy to match the product to our application. For fixed stairs, OSHA's standard 29 CFR 1910.25 requires treads to support at least 1,000 pounds of concentrated load. I checked the spec sheet against that number before placing the order. I also picked the serrated surface option (meaning the grip comes from small grooves that catch boot soles)—the right call for the intake area.

Step 3: Fix the Windows Before They Become a Bigger Problem

Windows are easy to defer. In the same month as the stair incident, two window issues popped up:

1. A ground-floor window at Holbrook had a crack that kept spreading. We installed a screen protector—safety film, basically a thick plastic layer that holds glass in place if it shatters. It cost about $80 and took 30 minutes to apply.
2. Our glass-walled conference room needed privacy after a candidate spotted a whiteboard with sensitive figures. Instead of building a wall (roughly $3,000), we applied a stained glass window film for about $200. It looks professional, and my assistant and I installed it in one afternoon with soapy water and a squeegee.

What I should add: both films are DIY-friendly. No contractor needed. The stained glass film has been up for eight months and still looks new.

Step 4: Schedule the Small Maintenance (Yes, the Vinegar Trick)

This one came from a complaint, not an inspection: the shower heads in our employee gym were spraying in all directions (ugh). The cause was mineral buildup clogging the nozzles. Here's how to clean a shower head with vinegar—the method I now put on the calendar quarterly:

1. Remove each shower head from the pipe.
2. Fill a plastic bag with white vinegar and put the shower head inside.
3. Tie the bag closed so the head stays fully submerged.
4. Wait a few hours (overnight for heavy buildup).
5. Scrub with a stiff brush, rinse, and reinstall.

It takes 15 minutes per shower head. I schedule it for April, July, October, and January. This is the prevention-over-cure part of my job: do the tiny task now so it never becomes a bathroom remodel later.

Step 5: Verify Every Delivery Before the Driver Leaves

Here's a step most people skip: check the delivery before the driver leaves. When the McNichols order arrived at Holbrook, I counted 14 pieces, confirmed the dimensions, and verified the material code on the packing slip.

I learned this the hard way. A few years ago, a batch of treads showed up with the wrong coating because I trusted a verbal confirmation. The vendor replaced them, but we lost a week of installation time. (Should mention: I now request a PDF packing list in advance so I know exactly what to check for.)

The treads went in that weekend. The stairs at Holbrook now have a solid, slip-resistant grip—14 steps, from the dock entry to the mezzanine lunchroom.

Step 6: Keep the Paperwork for Auditors

What gets you at audit time is having no documentation. I keep a spreadsheet with product codes, order dates, install dates, and costs for every safety-related purchase. When our insurance broker asked for proof of slip-resistance compliance earlier this year, I forwarded the spec sheets and the purchase orders. Thirty minutes of record-keeping saved me from a week of back-and-forth.

Documentation also tells you when to reorder. Stair treads wear out, and knowing the install date lets you plan the next purchase instead of reacting to a near-miss.

Mistakes to Avoid (I Made All of These)

• Assuming "same specification" means the same product. Two vendors can interpret a spec differently. Verify load ratings, material thickness, and coatings in writing.
• Handling urgent fixes by phone. In 2022, I okayed an "emergency" order verbally and got a product that was close but not correct. Now everything goes through email.
• Procrastinating on window film. That crack at Holbrook cost us time because I waited a week to order. The film itself was cheap and took 30 minutes to apply.
• Skipping preventive maintenance. The shower head cleanup took 15 minutes. The complaint emails and wasted water took far longer to deal with.
• Not photographing the before state. Photos of the worn treads and the cracked window became useful evidence for the insurance report.

Looking back, I should have ordered the window film at the same time as the stair treads—one delivery fee, one install day. At the time, they felt like separate projects. Now everything goes through the same checklist.

Five minutes of verifying before you order beats five days of correcting afterward. Since I started this process, we've avoided a repeat injury, and I estimate we've saved about $8,000 in potential rework.

Prices and product specs referenced above are current as of March 2025. Verify current specs at mcnichols.com, and check OSHA's latest requirements at osha.gov before placing your order.