Data from France and Spain indicate that about 6% of the working population is involved in maintenance tasks. For these reasons, it is difficult to identify the exact number of workers involved in maintenance activities. Maintenance covers a variety of occupations and it concerns all sectors of activity (buildings, machines, plants, infrastructures, roads need to be serviced, repaired and maintained more or less regularly.). Depending on the circumstances, shutdown conditions are considered safer than maintenance during working production. Maintenance can be carried out in shutdown conditions (the whole production line or parts of production are stopped) or in normal working conditions. Improvement maintenance is aimed at reducing the need of maintenance by making changes in the process or by engineering solutions.
These maintenance activities can be part of a worker’s daily routine, for example cleaning and checking a spray gun at the end of a working day. Preventive maintenance is carried out at predetermined intervals to reduce the probability of failure. Especially the unforeseen nature of remedial maintenance makes it a high-risk activity. It can be carried out immediately after the failure occurs (remedial maintenance such as emergency interventions, breakdown) or it can be delayed to limit the interference of the production process (deferred). įigure 1 – Types of maintenance activitiesĬorrective maintenance is carried out after the occurrence of a failure in order to eliminate the source of the failure or to reduce its occurrence. It implies a differentiation between preventive maintenance and corrective maintenance (figure 1).
It typically comprises servicing, repairing, inspecting, testing, adjusting or replacing parts and may involve, for example, opening closed production systems, exchanging filters, removing paint layers, blasting, grinding, sanding, applying fillers, applying paint, insulating, and repairing a power grid, gas supply or water supply.Īccording to the European standard EN 13306 maintenance can be defined as a "combination of all technical, administrative and managerial actions during the life cycle of an item intended to retain it in, or restore it to, a state in which it can perform the required function". Maintenance work includes a variety of activities across very different sectors and types of working environments. Maintenance is essential to keep equipment, machines, buildings and structures (such as bridges or tunnels), as well as the work environment, safe and reliable. Maintenance: a wide variety of activities More so than for any other activity, maintenance-related accidents are characterised by their many different causes. Maintenance workers have more serious and more frequent accidents than production workers. The work often requires maintenance workers to remove or dismantle collective protective equipment as such equipment is not effective for their type of work. Working in the maintenance trade often means working during stop, start-up, shut-down, or disrupted operating phases, giving rise to potential risks in terms of accidents or exposure to many hazards. Maintenance is carried out in all sectors and all workplace. Maintenance is an essential function in enterprise. 4.3 Limits of a point of view strictly based on design.4.2 Prevention through design: eliminating hazards at the design stage.3.3 Maintenance as a risk factor influencing accidents and illnesses.3.2 Data on accidents of maintenance workers.2 Maintenance: a wide variety of activities.