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Posted By Malcolm Napier Cochrane
I work for a Pharmacuetical company (around 500 employees)and we have a risk assessment process in place for maintenance/breakdown activities. Basically we have a Task Safety Assessment (TSA) form which can be used by our craftsman to identify hazards, identify precautions & PPE requirements(basically a tick sheet). If a certain box is ticked ie confined space, hot work, line breaking etc the job goes to a permit to work. However this approach is good for low to medium risk jobs however for high risk work we dont insist on a more formal approach (ie full blown RA & method statement). Just wondered what other companies do for higher risk maintenance activities? Looking to beef our process up. Look forward to your replies.
Mal
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Posted By Ron Hunter
"If an employee ticks a box....". On the face of it Malcolm, that reads as a bit of a weak system. Is there at least further scrutiny and intervention before the work goes ahead?
I would suggest that the principles of Risk Assessment and the Management Regs. require that all that is entirely foreseeable (and breakdowns and routine maintenance are foreseeable) be dealt with accordingly, i.e. in exactly the same way as any other of your significant tasks or activities, not left to the employee to determine when the breakdown occurs?
Or I could be misinterpreting your post...?
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Posted By SteveD-M
Malcolm
I am contracted to a major Pharma client and can tell the same tale which is lead mainly from their US influences.
I totally agree with the previous post. However I have tried to capture it with these guys with the use of a pre-planning checklist which I think you describe but for any significant or high risk work a PTW would be used. There are as I'm sure you have some major behavioural changes to go through yet to getting 100% compliance but the message is getting through...
Drop me a note off post we can perhaps help each other out and share the results?
Cheers
Steve
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Posted By Malcolm Napier Cochrane
Thanks Ron & Steve for your comments. Basically for large non CDM jobs (ie breakdowns, maintenance work etc) that is to be done the craftsman using our TSA will tick what hazards he identifys then passes this to the Permit issuer and he adds to the TSA any other hazards. If a permit is required (very likley for the higher risks jobs) then a PTW is issued listing all the precautions. I am concerned as you say Ron that we are not fully following the mananagement regs (suitable & sufficient) risk assessment (the 5 steps). Sometimes by chance we (The H&S dept) get to know about a certain job that is high risk we then insist on a more thorough risk assessment. What we don;t have is a good process for addressing higher risk maintenance tasks following the man regs. The thought here is to see what others do (benchmark) because it is not always easy to address this for maintenanace work the same as for say operating the plant. cheers
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