Between 10 and 15%
of all fatal accidents occur during maintenance
activity and some 15 to 20% of all accidents are
maintenance-related (ii).

Of course, maintenance right across industry is a routine activity. But for individual workers it
often presents a deviation from everyday activity. As such, they find they’re using different tools
and equipment, different personal protective
equipment (PPE) and there’s often pressure to get
equipment back up and running as quickly as possible. This can
inadvertently breed conditions where accidents
are significantly more likely than usual.

So who is most likely to suffer an accident? The overwhelming majority (85%) of PPE-related accidents injure men
(iii). Between 2005 and 2010, out of 88 UK industry-wide fatalities
across workers aged 16 to 24, 84 were
male (iv). These are UK figures, but they are
consistent with others spanning Europe, the US
and Canada. There could be a number of reasons
for this trend: 

•  Men are more likely to be involved in
manual handling and heavy industrial jobs

•  Younger workers may have received less
training and have less experience

•  More young workers are employed on a temporary or part-time basis

They are also possibly more likely to take risks and be reluctant to speak
up about safety issues

When it comes to the nature of these
injuries, almost half affect either workers’ hands
or feet. This reflects the fact that hands are used
in most industrial tasks (filling, carrying, cleaning,
operating machinery etc) whereas feet come into
contact with spills and are susceptible to having
heavy items dropped on them.

PPE

There is still a disappointingly large number of employers who do not provide appropriate
PPE. Where it is
provided but not used by individual employees is typically due to one of three reasons: A poor safety culture fostered
by the employer; the nature of the incident (e.g emergency or other time pressures); human factors such as tiredness, carelessness
or social pressure

When it comes to human factors, the HSE identifies four basic types
of failure:

•  A simple slip up during a frequently
performed action

•  A lapse of attention or memory

•  A mistake in understanding how something
works or an error of diagnosis or planning

•  A deliberate breach of rules and procedures.

Deliberate violations of the rules can
take many forms. Key issues to look out
for include: Cultural violations where rules are seen as no longer applying and are not enforced; situational violations that occur in specific
situations (often where time, money or
environment play a key role); exceptional violations when an individual tries
to solve an unusual problem in new ways; tiredness-related violations brought on
by long shifts; comfort-related violations where the right
protection isn’t used because it is too hot
or irritates the skin; social pressure.

You will probably never be able to create a 100%
safe environment – especially where employees
deliberately ignore safety procedures and
equipment. But by focusing on a combination
of culture, process and equipment, you should
be able to minimise accidents and injuries
throughout your organisation which will have a positive impact on the bottom line of
your business.

Sources

(i)  HSE’s At a Glance Guide to Health and Safety Statistics 2011/2012

(ii) Britishmetalforming.com CBM Metal Matters
issue summer 2010

(iii) HSE Evidence base for identifying potential
failures in the specification, use and maintenance
of PPE at work

(iv) British Safety Council Factsheet 2: Why should
an employer think about young workers?