Safe maintenance must remain a priority

Firstly, on behalf of Bemas and Maintenance Magazine, I wish to express my sincere condolences to the families, colleagues and friends of the victims.

Although neither party deliberately made a mistake, it was an unfortunate combination of circumstances, behaviour and decisions that led in both cases to an accident with the known serious consequences. These two unfortunate incidents confirm the dangerous nature of maintenance work.

Indeed, in addition to the risks linked to the environment, carrying out maintenance work intrinsically presents a certain number of specific risks.

It often involves both unusual tasks, carried out in exceptional circumstances and in the vicinity of potentially dangerous machines and equipment with moving parts, heat, explosive materials, etc.

Automation has made it possible in many production departments to reduce the risk of human error and the number of accidents. 

Automation in the field of maintenance is much less obvious: maintenance almost always requires direct human intervention on the equipment. Such equipment often has to be dismantled. This process increases the probability of human error and thus the risk of accidents.

Figures on safe maintenance

Statistics tell us that in Europe between 15% and 20% of accidents are related to maintenance work. And this is the case for 10% to 15% of all fatal accidents at work. Maintenance (repair, adjustment and configuration) is thus in fourth place in the top 10 work processes with the highest number of fatalities (figures for 2003-2005).

Recent research in 2010 showed that maintenance technicians in a company are 2.5 times more likely to be injured than their other colleagues. The severity of these injuries is on average twice as high. In addition, the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States has very detailed statistics. These show that maintenance technicians, for example, are six times more likely to have a fatal accident than firefighters.

It goes without saying that all these potential risks increase during major shutdowns and overhauls. During these maintenance operations, a large number of people are working at the same time in the same place under the time pressure of meeting deadlines. The probability of the occurrence of hazardous situations with serious consequences is therefore higher than during regular maintenance.

Identifying all these hazards and risks is one thing, finding an adequate answer to this question is something else. Each company has its own specificities and has to decide for itself what are the safest practices. Of course, all parties involved provide special and constant attention. Nevertheless, I would still like to present some interesting ideas here.

The study mentioned above by BEMAS showed the relationship between accident rates and the type of maintenance performed. Companies where the majority of maintenance is corrective (75%) put their staff at twelve times the risk of those in companies where corrective maintenance has been reduced to 25%. In the latter case, the maintenance technicians even work twice as safely as the average.

As a maintenance manager, we are constantly striving to be able to perform more preventive maintenance. These figures show that the safety manager should be a good ally in promoting this approach.

Wim Vancauwenberghe