Maintaining Work Equipment

Since January the 1st 2021 the rules and procedures regarding work place maintenance of machinery and equipment has changed. In order to ensure that work place machinery and equipment doesn't deteriorate to the extent that it may put people in harms way, employers are required by PUWER (The Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998) to maintain it to a good standard.

Effective maintenance of work place machinery and equipment can not only help businesses meet the expectations of PUWER but it can also improve productivity, reduce downtime and your environmental impact. Critical parts of workplace equipment may need a higher frequency of maintenance, which will be highlighted and determined through a risk assessment.

The result of unscheduled machinery / equipment downtime can be significant. Equipment that is not regularly maintained and / or serviced, will undoubtably breakdown, function incorrectly or flag up faults. This can result in a loss of production and / or a small amount of reputable damage due to failing deadlines, not to mention the exorbitant costs for quick delivery of spare parts / repair. These costs are nothing in comparison to the costs caused to a company found to have allowed an employee to continue working on unserviced / maintained equipment which resulted in injury or death.

The manufacturer's instructions should describe when and what maintenance is required in order to keep the equipment safe. These instructions should always be followed and it's recommended to keep a maintenance log. Logs and reports are useful as they provide maintenance personnel with previous information or actions taken. Maintenance logs must be kept up to date.

Although Good to Go Safety do not provide maintenance logs or maintenance services we do offer products that can elevate some of the pressures of workplace equipment maintenance. Our inspection check books can help highlight equipment faults before they become a more significant issue which if left unnoticed could cause major damage to machinery or injury to personnel. We have also recently launched a range of inspection and maintenance stations which enable employees to store inspections in a single central locations and utilise a dry wipe section on the station to share maintenance notes to other workers.

For more information on our inspections or inspection and maintenance products click on the appropriate related product below.