Specifying 24/7 Control Room Chairs in Australia

This guide is for the people who write the specification rather than the people who sit in the chair: control room and dispatch managers, security operations and NOC/SOC leads, emergency services facilities teams, broadcast engineering, and the procurement officers who have to defend the line item afterwards.

Everything below is either taken from published product data on this site, from published manufacturer literature we cite by name, or from warranty terms we hold in writing. Where we cannot verify a figure, we say so. That is deliberate. A specification document is relied on by other people, and an invented number in one is worse than a missing one.

The multi-shift problem

An office chair in a normal workplace is used by one person for roughly seven hours a day, five days a week. That person sets the seat height once, adjusts the lumbar support in the first week, and rarely touches either again. Call it 1,800 hours of occupancy a year, by one body of one size.

A control room chair on a three-shift roster is occupied around 8,760 hours a year, by three or more people whose height, mass and posture preferences differ. Every shift handover is a full readjustment: seat height, seat depth, backrest angle, armrest position, headrest. Over a year that is a few thousand cycles on adjustment hardware that a single-user chair would see a few dozen times.

Two consequences follow. First, durability failures concentrate in the gas lift and the tilt mechanism, not in the upholstery, which is where most buyers expect wear to show. Second, adjustment range matters far more than it does in an office. A chair that fits a 175 cm operator perfectly and cannot be made to fit the 192 cm operator on the next shift has failed at the specification stage, not the product stage.

The warranty-hours trap

This is the part most tenders miss, and it is the single most useful question you can put to a supplier.

Flokk warrants HAG chairs for 10 years against production defects in normal use of up to 9 hours per day, for users up to 110 kg. Where a chair is used for more than 9 hours per day, the term is 5 years. Fabrics and leather are covered for 5 years regardless. Flokk certifies its chairs for users up to 110 kg unless a particular model states otherwise.

Read that against a 24-hour roster. A HAG chair installed in a continuously occupied control room is, on the day it is delivered, operating under the 5-year term rather than the 10-year one. Nothing is concealed and nothing is defective: the warranty says what it says, in public. The failure is in the procurement process, where the headline number gets pasted into an evaluation matrix and the hours-per-day condition attached to it does not travel with it.

RH, also a Flokk brand, publishes the same structure at a different limit: 10 years, normal use up to 9 hours per day, users up to 150 kg. Same trap, higher weight ceiling.

Now compare the chair built specifically for the job. The RH Secur24 (sold as the BMA Secur24 before BMA Ergonomics merged into RH in January 2025) is a purpose-designed 24/7 monitoring chair, and the useful point for a specifier is that it sits inside the RH warranty structure rather than outside it — there are simply two terms, and the chair approved for your duty is not on the headline one. The RH standard term is 10 years for normal use of up to 9 hours per day, for users up to 150 kg. Flokk then states separately that it “provides a 5 year warranty for RH chairs that are approved for control room 24/7 use”. So the RH Secur24 carries 5 years — not because it is a lesser chair, but because it is the model approved for continuous occupancy, and continuous occupancy is what the 5-year term is written for. Flokk also notes that upholstery is not covered under these terms unless it is an RH approved 24/7 fabric, which is worth carrying into your fabric selection rather than discovering later. A 10-year term that steps down past 9 hours per day and a 5-year term written for round-the-clock duty are not the same kind of number, and putting them in the same column of a spreadsheet without the conditions is how a control room ends up with seating that is out of warranty terms on day one.

Other brands we carry publish other structures again. Humanscale is 15 years as a general rule across its seating, including the Freedom and Liberty, with World One LM at 12 years, monitor arms with gas cylinder components listed by Humanscale at 10 years, and textiles and castors at 5. Herman Miller chairs bought through us as parallel imports carry Chair Dinkum’s own 12-year warranty covering frame, tilt mechanism, gas lift, base, armrest structure and suspension materials, explicitly including 24/7 use — that last clause is there precisely because of the problem this section describes. Our Kyoto carries a 5-year structural warranty. All of it is set out at our warranty page.

The question to put in writing to every supplier: what does your warranty say about hours of use per day, and what term applies at continuous 24-hour occupancy? Most cannot answer without going back to the manufacturer. That in itself is useful information about who you are buying from.

What actually differs in the hardware

Four things, in descending order of how often they cause a problem.

Gas lift and mechanism cycle testing

A 24/7 chair uses a heavier gas cylinder and a reinforced tilt mechanism because it will be cycled several times more often than an office chair. The Secur24 product data describes an extra-strong steel-structure mechanism and an oversized 710 mm base. The Control Master 24/7 uses a six-star aluminium base and a full steel inner frame through both seat and back. If a supplier offers a standard task chair for a control room role, ask what changes in the mechanism. If the answer is nothing, that is your answer.

Weight rating

Covered in detail in our guide to office chair weight ratings. The short version for a control room: you are not specifying for the average operator, you are specifying for the heaviest person who will ever sit in that chair across the life of the roster, and exceeding a published rating generally voids the warranty explicitly. Note also that a maximum static load and a certified maximum user weight are two different figures, and suppliers do not always distinguish them.

Upholstery abrasion resistance

Wear concentrates at the front seat edge and the backrest shoulder line. The Control Master is supplied in Gabriel Fighter, a heavy-duty commercial fabric, or in black leather. Ask the mill’s published abrasion figure — Martindale or Wyzenbeek, whichever that mill quotes — and write a minimum into the specification. On RH chairs specified for 24/7 duty, also confirm the fabric is an RH approved 24/7 fabric, because upholstery outside that list is not covered by the warranty.

Cleanability

A chair handed over three times a day gets wiped down three times a day. Ask which cleaning agents the manufacturer permits before you write a cleaning protocol around the chair, because solvent damage to upholstery is not a warranty claim anywhere.

What to put in the tender

• Minimum user weight rating in kilograms, and the standard it was tested to. ANSI/BIFMA X5.1 and EN 1335 are the two in play in Australia.
• Warranty term at your actual hours of daily occupancy, stated by the supplier in writing, not the headline term.
• Cycle test evidence for gas lift and tilt mechanism — the report, not a summary of it.
• Upholstery abrasion figure and approved cleaning method.
• Headrest where operators monitor screens for long periods without leaving the chair.
• Seat height and seat depth range, checked against the actual size spread of your roster, not a notional average operator.
• An explicit question asking whether test documentation can be supplied at all. This one sorts a supplier list faster than any other.

The three chairs in our 24/7 range, with what we can verify

A note on that Secur24 figure, because it is the one most often queried. 234 kg is a genuine published specification from the product’s manufacturer literature: it appears as “Maximum (static) load 234 kg” in the Secur24 Basic and Secur24 Exclusive product flyers and in the 24/7 range brochure issued under the BMA name before the merger. It is a maximum static load, not a certified maximum user weight tested to ANSI/BIFMA X5.1. Separately, RH publishes a general maximum user weight of 150 kg across its range. Those two numbers do not contradict each other — they measure different things, one being a load the structure is stated to withstand and the other a certified user weight — but they are not interchangeable, and a tender needs the right one. RH does not currently publish a Secur24-specific certified user weight that we can cite. If a rated user capacity is a mandatory requirement in your specification, contact Chair Dinkum before you submit and we will obtain the current certified figure for your application in writing from the supplier.

Browse the range at 24/7 chairs, or the wider ergonomic task chair range if your occupancy is closer to extended single-shift than genuine round-the-clock.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use a normal task chair in a 24-hour control room?

Physically, yes. Contractually, check the warranty first. Flokk warrants HAG chairs for 10 years in normal use up to 9 hours per day and 5 years beyond that, so a HAG chair on a 24-hour roster is under the 5-year term from installation. The mechanism and gas lift in a standard task chair are also cycle-tested for lower duty than a purpose-built 24/7 model.

What weight rating should I specify for a control room?

Specify for the heaviest operator who could be rostered on across the life of the chair, not an average. Among the chairs we can verify, the Control Master 24/7 is published at 200 kg and the RH New Logic 220 at 150 kg. Exceeding a published rating generally voids the warranty in explicit terms.

What warranty does the RH Secur24 carry?

Five years. Flokk states that it provides a 5 year warranty for RH chairs that are approved for control room 24/7 use, and the RH Secur24 is one of those chairs. The 10-year RH term is the standard-use term, which applies to normal use of up to 9 hours per day for users up to 150 kg. Upholstery is not covered under either term unless it is an RH approved 24/7 fabric.

What is the weight capacity of the RH Secur24?

The product’s manufacturer literature publishes a maximum (static) load of 234 kg for the Secur24, stated in the Secur24 Basic and Secur24 Exclusive product flyers and in the 24/7 range brochure. That is a maximum static load rather than a certified maximum user weight — the two measure different things. RH separately publishes a general maximum user weight of 150 kg across its range, and does not currently publish a Secur24-specific certified user weight. If you need a single figure confirmed in writing for a tender, contact Chair Dinkum and we will obtain the current certified figure for your application from the supplier.

Which brand has the longest warranty for 24/7 use?

Of the brands we carry, Herman Miller chairs bought through Chair Dinkum carry our own 12-year warranty covering frame, tilt mechanism, gas lift, base, armrest structure and suspension materials, and that cover explicitly includes 24/7 use. Humanscale is 15 years as a rule on its seating but without a stated 24/7 clause, and the Flokk brands carry the hours-per-day conditions described above.

Do you supply test documentation for tenders?

Where the manufacturer provides it, yes. Ask early rather than at submission, because turnaround depends on the manufacturer rather than on us.

Questions about a specific roster, operator size range or cleaning regime? Contact us. Full warranty terms for every brand we carry are at our warranty page.