For both aesthetic and practical reasons, most manufacturing facilities need to be periodically repainted.

If you intend to hire an industrial painting specialist to repaint your facility in the near future, here are some safety precautions you should take to ensure that the process goes as smoothly as possible.

Make sure the area that is being painted is well-ventilated

The fumes produced by freshly-applied industrial paint can be very powerful and pungent. If inhaled in large quantities, these fumes can make a person feel nauseous and dizzy, and result in them developing a headache.

If a person suffers from a respiratory condition (such as asthma, for example), inhalation of these fumes could also exacerbate the symptoms of their illness.

As such, it is important to make sure that the area of your manufacturing facility that is being repainted is well-ventilated so that your employees do not suffer any ill-effects if they need to work close to this part of the building.

To ventilate the area, keep any nearby windows and exterior doors open throughout the entire painting process. Additionally, consider mounting fans onto the windows, so that the fume-filled air is pulled towards them.

Set up barriers around the painting area

It is important to set up barriers around the section of the facility that needs to be painted. These barriers will serve two purposes.

Firstly, they will minimise the risk of any employees getting wet paint on their clothing or shoes when they walk past their area. This, in turn, will reduce the chances of any paint being transferred onto the products that these employees are involved in processing.

This is a particularly important point to note if your facility makes consumable goods (such as drinks, pharmaceuticals or food) or products that are used on people's skin (such as cosmetics or toiletries), as it could be quite dangerous for people to consume or use items that have been contaminated with industrial paint.

Secondly, the barriers will reduce the likelihood of injuries occurring during the painting process, by ensuring that employees who are using forklifts to transport products around the facility do not accidentally crash into the ladders or mobile scaffolding that the painters will be using to access and paint the taller sections of the building.

You can set up a barrier in seconds, by placing industrial hazard tape around the area that needs to be painted. Alternatively, if you want a more robust barrier, you can use a portable, expanding fence instead.