Welcome to The Playground Post
This is your biweekly dose of playground knowledge from someone who's spent 20 years inspecting them.
In this issue, I’ll also share some observations on how playground salespeople, particularly when working with parks departments, often don’t provide the full story when they sell you a playground. Not because they’re trying to deceive you, but because, often, they simply don’t have the full picture.
All that and more lies ahead in The Playground Post.
Monitoring Minute
Potential Problems Pertaining to Playground Parks
Parks and recreation departments face unique challenges when it comes to playgrounds. Some are responsible for dozens of playgrounds within a 50-mile radius, and that in itself presents a load of challenges in keeping all of them safe for continual use.
Playgrounds at parks are fun, but require regular maintenance.
In my experience, most playground salespeople aren’t upfront about the costs of maintaining playgrounds. If a city tells its parks department to expand and build five new playgrounds over the next three years, a salesperson who wants the bid won’t do anything to jeopardize the sale, and that includes discussing the various lifecycle costs needed to keep playgrounds safe and usable for years to come.
Frankly, this upsets me, and there are two big reasons:
When a playground is in need of repair due to inadequate inspections and maintenance, kids lose out on a space to gather and play.
When a parks department suddenly needs to shell out thousands of dollars for playground repairs, it’s a problem that could’ve been easily avoided if the right people had known what they needed to do to keep their playgrounds safe and in good working order.
To be clear, I’m not saying that every salesperson in the playground industry will try to mislead you. But it’s just as important to make note of the things they don’t mention as the things they do.
Two big questions I would ask any playground salesperson are:
Who do I call to make sure my playground is safe?
Who do I call if something breaks?
If they can’t answer those questions, that’s a big red flag.
One Thing to Check on Your Playground This Week
With more and more kids getting active on the playground, make sure your playground stays trash- and debris-free by conducting weekly spot checks for items that shouldn’t be on the playground. I’ve mentioned tree branches and rocks before, but keep an eye out as well for irregular objects such as lunchboxes, candy wrappers, and soda cans.
Depending on the type and depth of your surfacing, these could be hard to notice at first glance, so when you’re smoothing out surfacing with a rake or similar tool, make sure nothing out of the ordinary is visible.
That's it for this issue.
My hope in this short and sweet issue is that you come away with one key takeaway:
The person who sold you your playground isn’t the person who keeps it safe. Your playground needs a plan for the future, one that's developed and adjusted as needed with the help of a CPSI-certified maintenance expert. If your salesperson claims they don’t know one, or, worse yet, that a maintenance plan is unnecessary, they may not be the right person to purchase from.
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Talk soon,
Nic Breedlove
Certified Playground Safety Inspector
20 years in the game. Still learning.