What are the most important safety procedures to follow during maintenance?

I’ve found maintenance breakdowns to be the highest safety risk due to management pressure in sustaining production targets, demanding swift response. Following a ‘near fatal’ event where an operator attempted to start a machine with the maintenance engineer still inside, I introduced the following measures: 1. Person who attends maintenance breakdowns: • Has been authorised by management and related staff made aware • Is qualified to do so • In possession of key, fuse or safety device to ensure power is isolated • Has the right tools, equipment and replacement parts to carry out repair • Has an assistant/ observer when working in hazardous location 2. Risk Assessments & Safe Systems of Work in place. 3. Preventive maintenance System.

Issue maintenance plan especially for tasks on multiple equipment. Prepare work orders, safe working procedures, PPM checklists, isolation permits and issue to the staff carrying out the work. Ensure all the required spares and special required equipment are in place. On the day of the work ensure all equipment is isolated with supervisor locks, all equipment is depressurised and isolation valves locked off. Ensure all the staff have fitted their own locks where required, issue additional locks as required.

One thing that seems to be way too common is having equipment running that is soon going to fail and no coordination with maintenance to see if they have replacement parts and if not, get them ordered BEFORE the equipment or part fails. Doing this will dramatically reduce downtime and production loss.

Supervisor to check on progress throughout the day and advise where required. Staff should feel comfortable when approaching supervisors, poor supervision is a problem in itself and lead to staff trying to do the work when they don’t have all the required experience and lead to them taking short cuts in the procedures.

The work area must be left clean and safe with the equipment ready to run when the isolation is removed. All tools and used parts must be accounted for. The staff must remove their personal isolation and request a supervisor to come and check that the work is in a pos to start up. If the equipment is safe to start the supervisor will remove their locks and start the equipment out of sequence and follow the correct start up procedure. If required additional staff will be around the equipment to monitor the start up stop the equipment if problems arise, isolation locks will be re-applied before any further checks/changes are carried out. If all is OK the permits will be signed off and the equipment handed back to operations.

If you have a list of tools you will need for a job, make sure you have everything listed before you leave the area. A easy way to not forget tools while you are working with them is if you need to lay it down, lay it on your boot. You won’t accidentally forget where you put it or forget about it altogether if you can’t walk away without it falling off your foot.

All maintenance advice given from the supplier will generally be generic and so your experience with the equipment will be different as conditions in every plant will be different. This experience must be added into your procedures and safe working practices. Involve the team in these decisions as this helps the team bond and help them take ownership of the work. Always listen to your team as someone will have seen this work, or something similar, done before. You take the final decision on the way to do the work but your staff have had input into the decision You may be a Maintenance Manager and think you know everything, believe me you don’t. Be approachable to your staff and listen, remember they can break you as you can dismiss the.

I believe the most important safety procedure depending on the related maintenance activities type could be different Although usually the fix rules in any scenario are: 0. Don't assume, if you don't sure ask from someone who knows 1. Don't start the activity before risk assessment 2. In case of any abnormal activity request for Safe Work Permit 4. Always follow the LOTOTO

Supervisors/Managers and staff, never be afraid to ask questions, remember nobody knows everything and the Supervisors/ Managers had to learn from somewhere. Never be afraid to pick other peoples brains, even if they assholes, they’ll do the same to you.