Hospital Work Benches and Workstations

Three ways to build a bench

A bench with storage underneath, a bench top rack that puts bins at the back of the surface, or a mobile workstation that goes to the job.

Bench and cabinet combination. The manufacturer publishes a 60 by 30 by 36 inch work bench and cabinet combination with a 60 by 30 by 2 inch maple top, three drawers, one shelf and twenty bins, at a published ship weight of 375 pounds. That single unit replaces a bench, a drawer unit and a bin rack, which is why it is usually the right first purchase for a shop that is starting from a folding table.

Bench top racks. Small sloped racks that sit at the back of any bench and hold the fasteners and fittings in bins. Four sizes are published, from 18 to 36 inches wide, with published load capacities from 125 to 150 pounds.

Mobile workstation carts. A chrome cart with one flat and one slanted wire shelf, published at a 400 pound capacity, so the parts and the surface travel together to a plant room or a corridor job.

Published models

The published workstation cart build is two 34 inch posts, two 27 inch posts, one flat wire shelf, one slanted wire shelf, four 5 inch swivel poly stem casters with two brakes and four donut bumpers, in chrome. Bench rack packages are published with bin counts and bin colours (blue, green, ivory, red, yellow and black) and in clear-bin versions, so a rack can arrive ready to load.

Bench top rack, fullThirty-two bins across the back of a 36 inch bench, at a published 150 pound capacity.

Workstation cartOne flat shelf and one slanted shelf on casters, so the parts follow the work.

Getting the bench right

• Decide standing or seated first. The published combination bench is 36 inches high, which suits standing work. Seated work needs a different surface height, and it is cheaper to decide that before ordering than to live with it.
• Keep the work surface empty. Every bin, tool and part that lives on the bench top is surface you paid for and cannot use. That is what the bench rack and the drawers are for.
• Bins at the back, tools on the wall, bulk underneath. Three zones, each with its own product: a bench rack, a wall rail or tool rack, and drawers or a cabinet below.
• Match the top to the work. The published maple top handles impact and can be resurfaced; a stainless surface suits work that gets wet or wiped down. Both have their place in the same building.
• Size the rack to the bench, not the bin count. A 36 inch rack on a 30 inch bench overhangs and gets knocked. Measure the usable back edge.
• One mobile workstation per crew. The cart that travels stops the twenty-minute walk back to the shop for one fitting.

Where these benches go

They also fit biomedical engineering benches, the receiving and breakdown bench in stores, grounds and transport workshops, and the temporary project bench that appears during a refit. For clinical pack and prep surfaces the stainless family is the better answer – see stainless work tables – and for laboratory benches the Labs USA laboratory furniture pages cover casework and fume hood benches, which are a different product set entirely.

• Facilities and support areas — the department workflow page for plant operations and stores.
• Hospital maintenance storage — the bins, racks and carts around the bench.
• New construction and expansion — sizing shops and stores in the drawings.

Related pages

• Facilities storage — the parent hub: every support-area storage family.
• Hospital maintenance storage — louvered racks, rail carts and tool organizers.
• Hospital bulk storage racks — steel shelving and racking for cases and bulk.
• Stainless work tables — stainless benches for clinical pack and prep rooms.

Also useful

• Medical bins and containers — the bin sizes that fill a bench rack.
• Wall-mounted medical storage — rails and wall panels above a bench.
• Medical storage cabinets — lockable storage for tools and test equipment.

Hospital work bench FAQ