Work of the Maintenance Department

Importance of Maintenance Work

An activity we have never previously covered but one in which people are exposed to just about every known hazard is that of Maintenance.

The trigger for producing this article is that the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work launched its latest campaign on 28th April 2010, targeting the issue of Safe Maintenance. Throughout 2010 and 2011, the aim is to raise awareness or the importance of high standards of maintenance, the risks to everyone if it is not done properly and the risks for those who carry it out.

We are currently witnessing on our TV screens a major tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of an off-shore oil rig platform being operated by BP. A number of workers lost their lives in the explosion and it seems that all the resources available to the US Government are being called in to control the aftermath.

Obviously it is too soon to know the full reasons for this explosion but it calls to mind a similar disaster in the UK's North Sea Oil Field when the Piper Alpha platform exploded in 1988. This extreme example was put down to inadequate coordination of the maintenance process. If we allow standards to slip, we may appear to get away with it for a long time but eventually – as was the case with Piper Alpha – we get caught out and the consequences can be both tragic and disastrous.

Maintenance work, properly carried out, is an essential element of creating a safe working environment for all of us, though it is an aspect that many of us tend to overlook and take for granted.

Prevention Better than Cure

The ideal approach is to adopt a schedule of inspections, checks, and preventative maintenance with the aim of avoiding problems ever occurring in the first place.

Unfortunately, we are all fallible and there will inevitably be occurrences that nobody could have foreseen. That is when corrective maintenance is needed to repair whatever has failed and deal with any damage that has been caused. Statistics indicate that most accidents occur when this kind of maintenance is being carried out. Estimates across Europe suggest that between 10% and 15% of all fatal accidents at work are associated with maintenance work.

As mentioned earlier, maintenance covers a very broad range of environments, equipment and work activities so that maintenance workers may face significantly more risks than other employees.

As a consequence, they need to receive full training consistent with the range of risks they face, including the use of all safety and maintenance work equipment. After all, everyone's safety depends on good maintenance of our workplaces and the equipment we use on a daily basis.

Principles of Good Maintenance

To be effective, we need to adopt a structured and organised approach to Maintenance. For example:

There needs to be clearly defined roles and responsibilities and every person involved with maintenance should understand their individual responsibilities and accountability within the overall structure.
As with any other type of work, maintenance tasks should be subject to risk assessments, which are reviewed on a regular basis since there are so many factors that can change the risks associated with maintenance.
The management aspects of maintenance are particularly important since it can too easily be viewed as a series of disparate, one-off emergency scenarios that have to be addressed. Whilst there is inevitably an element of this, it is also important to adopt a systematic managerial style to minimise confusion, oversights and mistakes.
As with any health and safety situation, the whole process should be subject to regular review and a cycle of continuous improvement, with full reporting to senior management.

Involve Maintenance Early

Maintenance should not be viewed by the rest of the organisation as something that happens after the event. Those responsible for maintenance should be routinely consulted over procurement decisions and when changes are proposed to the work environment. For example, even a major structural change may be accomplished in only a few weeks or months, whereas maintenance carries on for years or even decades. It's important, therefore to take account of maintenance issues from the start of every project.

This article is only a brief treatment of the issues involved with maintenance work, with the intention of raising awareness. You can download a free booklet from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work that contains much more information.

If you need assistance in putting all the advice into practice, then please talk to our sales consultants. There is no obligation and we have solutions that are designed for companies in all sectors from the smallest SME to the biggest corporation.

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