A trip hazard was reported: a response plan for property managers

The short answer

When a resident, tenant or visitor reports a trip hazard on a walkway you manage, work through six steps in order: keep people off the spot, write the report down, find out who owns that stretch, inspect and measure it, decide what to do, and close the record. The table on this page is a response log with one row for each step. Print the page and the log prints with it.

Steps 2 to 6 follow the order that the Federal Highway Administration's guide to maintaining sidewalks and paths, published in October 2013, recommends to communities after a complaint or an injury. The guide frames that procedure around liability and advises running it with an attorney involved. This page applies the same order to any report. The guide says it is meant for any agency or organization that builds and maintains pedestrian facilities, most often government bodies, and it names homeowners associations among the others. It does not name property management companies; this page applies its order of work to them too.

This page is a working order, not legal advice. It does not say what you owe anyone, what to say to a person who was hurt, or how long to keep records. Your insurer and your attorney answer those.

1. Keep people off it

Before anything else, stop the next person from tripping on the same spot. The guide says a hazard should get a temporary repair as soon as practicable. It says a temporary closure can be considered in some cases where another route clearly serves the same places, and warns that closures are rarely effective at keeping people away from where they are going. Until the spot is fixed, put out something people will see, and if you close the path, make sure the way around is one people can actually use. Write down what you put out and when. Do not leave anything that becomes a hazard of its own, such as a cord across the path.

If someone was hurt, tell your insurer, and your attorney if you have one. The FHWA guide introduces its steps after an injury by saying that, depending on state and local laws and on exposure to liability, it may be prudent for a community to set a standard procedure, and that the community should keep its attorney aware and involved.

2. Write the report down

The guide says an incident report should include the location, what occurred, and any defects identified. Add who reported it, how and when, and a label for the location that someone else could find later, such as "Building C, east walk, third joint from the door."

Send every report to one place. The guide says all requests for sidewalk work and reported hazards should go to the same department, and preferably the same person. On a property, that is usually the manager or a named maintenance lead. A report that sits in a leasing office inbox helps nobody.

3. Find out who owns that stretch

The guide says ownership and maintenance should be verified, because several different agencies often control the walkways within one community. A property can be just as mixed. The walk from a door to the parking lot may be yours, and a path between buildings may be an HOA common area. For the sidewalk along the street, the guide's research found many places where a city or state agency maintains it and many where it is the adjacent property owner's responsibility.

For the sidewalk along the street, ask the city that the address is in who maintains it, and how to report a problem. Check with the city about the specific address before you hire anyone or wait for a city crew. For common areas and lots, the assessment planning page covers who can decide and who can approve access.

4. Inspect it and measure it

The guide describes a spot inspection: the one made when the public or staff report a hazard, or when a fall is reported. It says someone must verify that a problem exists before any repair is made. After an injury, it says to inspect right away, describe the condition and any defects, take photographs and measurements, and compare what you find with the last inspection.

Measure the height of any step at its highest point, and photograph the spot twice: once from far enough away to show where it is, and once close up with something of known size in the frame. The inquiry preparation guide explains the photographs. A tape measure in a manager's hand records the condition. It does not settle whether a walkway meets an accessibility standard. The sidewalk grinding page quotes the figures the federal accessibility standards use for a change in level.

5. Decide: temporary fix, scheduled repair, or no repair

The guide sorts repairs into three groups. Temporary measures are made just to reduce tripping hazards and last less than a year. Short-term measures typically last one to five years. Long-term measures include replacement. It says a temporary repair may be a wedge or a patch of asphalt or quick-mix cement, meant to relieve the worst of the hazard until a more permanent repair.

For a reported trip hazard, the guide highly recommends a wedge as a quick corrective measure until a more permanent repair later in the season or within a year. It also calls wedging least suitable as a long-term repair, and lists it among techniques that typically last one to five years, alongside patching, grinding, horizontal cutting, mud-jacking and overlays. Its photographs show a new wedge beside an old, broken-down one, and the caption warns that a small wedge may still create a hazard or be hard to cross in a wheelchair. Grinding and mud-jacking are different: the guide says many communities have success with them as longer-term solutions, with the caution that the problem underneath may continue.

In the guide's model program, a reported tripping hazard is noted and answered quickly, and repeated falls or complaints about the same area move it higher on the repair schedule. A city decides by its own adopted criteria. A private property may have none written down, which is one reason to decide with a contractor's assessment in hand. For the permanent options, compare grinding, leveling and replacement in the method comparison guide.

Sometimes the inspection finds nothing that needs repair. Write that down too. The guide says documentation should give strong and clear support for a decision when no repairs are made.

6. Close the record

The guide calls it good policy to document reported problems and how they were resolved, and to note it when an inspection finds a condition does not meet the criteria for repair. Close each row of the log with the date, who did the work, a photo after, and a date to look again if the fix was temporary.

One report often means there are others nearby. When you are ready to look at the whole property, the assessment planning page explains how to organize several locations into one request.

Getting it assessed

When you have the report, the photos and the measurements, use the contact page to describe the property, the city and the location. Sending an inquiry does not book an assessment. The operator reviews every inquiry and responds with the next step.