The safety of your employees should always be a top priority. That’s particularly true when your employees work with flame hazards including arc flashes, fires or combustible gas.
Your employees need protective flame resistant workwear. And you need peace of mind that you’re providing them with the right gear to do their jobs safely, comfortably and within budget. It’s also important to partner with a company that can meet the regulatory standards identified during your company’s independent safety risk assessment and provide you with a variety of compliant options that address specific work conditions.
Whether you need flame resistant pants, flame resistant shirts, flame resistant coveralls or flame resistant lab coats, there are many benefits to outsourcing your workwear with a FR rental program. Let’s look at the top advantages of a rental program from Vestis™:
1. Cost Management
Purchasing team FR garments can require a significant up-front investment that can delay other pressing business objectives. And it’s not just the initial purchase of FR garments that can compromise budgets. As new hires join the organization or new styles are introduced, additional garments need to be purchased. This can lead to additional expenses that further impact budgets.
A rental program can eliminate those large up-front costs by providing lower, predictable weekly costs that can be worked into your budget without tying up large amounts of capital or delaying other organizational purchases.
2. Time Management
Consider this: independent buyers of employee uniforms spend an average of 1.6 hours each month managing uniforms for employees1 — time that could be better spent focusing on their job or managing business operations. When it comes to purchasing FR garments, even more hours are spent making sure you have the right garment for the right job with the right protection level to meet your business’ compliance needs.
When you work with a uniform rental company like Vestis, you save time that would otherwise be spent on sourcing, shopping, ordering, measuring and distributing. While a rental company can’t advise you on what protection you need, Vestis can determine if the garments you sourced meet the protection level you need to keep compliant. You gain back valuable time to focus on other important organizational tasks.
3. Routine Uniform Maintenance
The need to repair or replace damaged flame resistant shirts, flame resistant pants or flame resistant coveralls may result in lost productivity for the team while they wait for new garments. It also creates the unnecessary hassle of sourcing or managing repairs. But most importantly, damaged or improperly repaired FR garments can result in serious workplace mishaps or injuries.
A rental program gives you convenience and peace of mind as repairs and/or replacements are done seamlessly. Garments are inspected on a weekly basis for wear or damage and repaired or replaced as needed. There is no down time while an employee waits for their FR jacket or FR lab coat and no wasted time while procurement gets approval on purchase orders for replacement uniforms.
Additionally, a rental program prevents employees from handling their own repairs with non-FR compliant materials or failing to report rips or tears that could have catastrophic consequences.
4. Approved Laundering Processes
When not laundered correctly, FR garments can degrade or lose their critical FR properties. Relying on employees to properly handle the at-home wash process can be a risky undertaking.
When you have a rental program from Vestis, your soiled or worn FR garments are picked up on a weekly basis, laundered using wash formulations specific to FR fabrics and threads, and delivered back to you clean and ready to go.
5. Regulatory Compliance
To help protect against flame and thermal hazards, FR garments must be certified to National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) 2112 Standards for protection against short duration thermal exposures from fire. To receive NFPA 2112 compliance, products must undergo finished product evaluation, design and function review, and quality manual review. Those reviews cover everything on the garment including hardware, reflective striping, fabrics, labels and threads.
NFPA 70E compliance helps companies and employees avoid injuries or fatalities resulting from shock, electrocution, arc flash and arc blast. NFPA 70E-certified FR garments must be worn when an employee is exposed to electric hazard that could result in an arc flash causing severe burn potential.
FR rental programs provide you with options to help you meet your independently acquired risk assessment for NFPA 70E and also covers NFPA 2112 protection against flash fires. Additionally, a rental program can help you stay compliant with your independently acquired industry or task specific CAT rating and ATPV protection requirement.
Vestis takes compliance a step further by offering a wide variety of options within individual CAT ratings including FR shirts, FR pants, FR jackets and more available in various fabric types, fabric weights and colors that help you meet regulatory compliance requirements.
6. Comfort, Fit and Durability
It’s important that workwear is well made and well designed to stand up to your toughest jobs. An experienced rental program provider can assist you and your employees in getting workwear specifically suited for climate, job function, work conditions or personal preference.
A rental program can also provide individual, on-site measuring that eliminates guesswork or inaccurate self-reporting when it comes to properly sizing your employees in FR garments.
Reliable, Predictable and Seamless Process
Choosing a rental program has multiple benefits from time and cost savings, to adhering to laundry and regulatory compliance. Vestis can help you get started on a FR rental program that gives you reliable and predictable deliveries, a seamless process and greater peace of mind when it comes to employee safety and compliance. Simply contact us for more information.
1Big Village – Customer Time Study. Independent buyer statistic – Sept. 2022. Paid for by Vestis.
The information presented on this website should not be used as a substitute for reviewing OSHA or other regulations and recognized safety standards or be used in lieu of official safety training or certified on site analysis. The customer has the best understanding of its intended use of any flame resistant merchandise or other personal protective equipment and it is always the customer’s responsibility to determine that the flame resistant merchandise or other personal protective equipment that it has selected is appropriate for the intended use of the customer and its employees. Flame resistant garments are manufactured to provide thermal protection when worn properly and the amount of protection is generally determined based on fabric weight and composition. The product information is based on information provided by the fabric/merchandise manufacturers and Vestis makes no independent representations regarding the fabric and/or merchandise, including any representations regarding merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Please check with the fabric or merchandise manufacturer regarding specific certifications, if any, for each item. For reflective merchandise, any garments supplied satisfy specific ANSI/ISEA standards only if so labeled. Vestis makes no representation, warranty or covenant regarding the visibility performance of any reflective merchandise. Reflective properties may be reduced or ultimately lost through laundering. It is the customers responsibility to determine if additional safety measures may be necessary under specific work conditions and if particular merchandise is suitable for the intended use.