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Our building has access problems and we don't even know how some of the equipment came in. Can you deal with this?
Yes, the other part of our business is the distribution and installation of laboratory apparatus. If you have bought equipment from: New Brunswick Scientific, Jouan, MDH Microflow, SLS, Prior Lab Supplies, AGB, Amercare, Biopharma, Phitec or Revco in the last twenty years, we probably delivered and installed it. The HRH estimator who will visit you has many years of hard won personal experience and will be able to quickly identify potential problems and the solutions to them. We use a wide variety of handling and lifting gear to overcome obstacles and tame the most heavy and unwieldy apparatus.
"Our powerful Escalera stair climbers enable our teams to move loads weighing up to 500 Kgs. up or down stairs."
We use and store materials that are classified as hazardous and are worried about the safety aspects. How do you deal with this?
Chemicals and other potentially hazardous materials fall under the "Transport of hazardous packages by road" or "Hazpack" regulations, as they are commonly known. Every laboratory, in our experience, has problems that are common and usually a problem that it can claim as its own. HRH has a Hazpack expert who will help carry out a safety audit for your move. We will then prepare a report and a method statement detailing the hazards identified and the means by which we will neutralize them. This is essential from your point of view as it covers you in the unlikely event of an incident.
There are safety implications that go beyond the movement of hazardous materials. Routes for loading and unloading have to be agreed to minimize risk to your staff, to other users of the buildings not involved in the move, and the general public. This is also covered in the audit.
We have samples stored in -80 degree freezers that we intend to move to our new site. How do we keep the freezers down to temperature to preserve the samples during the move?
You might hear people suggest running a generator on the truck to supply power to keep the freezers running. Anybody who suggests that has not tried it. Aside from the legal and safety implications, we consulted freezer engineers many years ago who advised us that the freezers will fail. Not "might" fail, but will definitely fail, probably during the journey but even if they survive that, they will fail within days of the move.
This is for exactly the same reason that it is inadvisable to tilt a freezer. We have worked with systems designers, experimented with hot rooms to ascertain warm up rates, and worked out a method that guarantees the integrity of your samples and the safety of your expensive freezers. Our longest journey to date involved the transport of four -80 chest freezers with samples from Switzerland to the UK, during the summer. This was achieved with the samples never being exposed to a temperature higher than -65 degrees. Our method relies on patience, hard work and a disciplined approach. Not luck. <<
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