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Playground Inspection and Maintenance Guide

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Advocacy & Impact Tools

Playground Inspection and Maintenance Guide

Careful maintenance keeps your playground in top condition. Authored by playground safety consultants Teri Hendy and Daniel Hendy, of Site Masters, Inc., this guide can help you maximize your playground maintenance efforts by learning to properly identify and correct potential hazards on the playground. It will also help you formulate a maintenance plan to help you protect your investment, manage risk, improve children’s play experiences, and control costs. The guide includes sample inspection forms to aid developing procedures for your playground maintenance program.

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Our Advisory Network

  • Teri Hendy, Safety Consultant, Sitemasters, Inc.
  • Daniel Hendy, Safety Consultant, Sitemasters, Inc.

Maintenance Checklists

Because play equipment and surfacing are subject to changes from use, abuse, and climate, they must be inspected on a regular basis. The frequency of inspection will be determined by many factors including equipment age, usage, and materials and external factors like the age of the users, climate, and vandalism. Regardless of site-specific attributes of the playground, two types of inspections should be performed on all playgrounds: low frequency and high frequency.

High-Frequency Maintenance

Often performed daily or weekly, high frequency inspections look at frequently changing conditions caused by use, weather, and/or vandalism.

Low-Frequency Maintenance

Often performed quarterly or semi-annually, low frequency inspections are in-depth investigations of the equipment and surfacing looking for wear and tear. An example of this type of maintenance would be replacing heavily worn “S” hooks that were noted during the inspection.

Why Request the Playground Inspection and Maintenance Guide

  • Why is Inspection and Maintenance Important?
  • Management and Staffing Priorities
  • Maintenance Inspection—Frequency and Process
  • Performing Required Maintenance
  • Nature Play Areas
  • Resources

Program Request

Fill out the form below to request your copy of Playground Inspection and Maintenance Guide