Are your maintenance practices all they should be?
Maintenance is integral to running a safe and reliable operation; good planning and having the right skills and tools to do the job minimises the risk to workers and the public in any task from repairing a gas main to fixing a roof.
That’s the message behind a new European initiative launched in Britain this month.
It is estimated that between 25% & 30% of all manufacturing industry deaths in Britain result from maintenance activity, with common causes of fatalities and major injuries including falls from height and failure to properly isolate machinery so that it restarts while being worked on.
Try this quick & easy checklist to assess how good your current maintenance practices are:
- Do your employees always isolate machines before doing maintenance?
- Has your maintenance staff got their own isolation padlocks and warning boards?
- Do you know if you’ve got asbestos in the building, and where it is?
- Do you use this asbestos information when planning building maintenance jobs?
- Do you think about what access equipment is right for the job, or just using whatever you have to hand?
- Are you thinking through proper lifting plans before lifting heavy loads?
- Are you competent enough to take charge of non-standard lifting jobs?
- Do you use ‘permits to work’ properly when you need them?
- Do you have any confined spaces?
- And finally, the $64M question – Do your managers and supervisors stop maintenance work if it isn’t being done safely?
If you’ve answered ‘No’ to some of these questions, perhaps it’s time for a health check – contact Andrew today on 07870 777303 for a free review of your maintenance practices
