Method for analyzing occupational risks in maintenance

Occupational health and safety is a major issue for companies. The human and economic impact of occupational accidents and illnesses is considerable, and controlling these risks is a priority for employers, who are obliged to take the necessary measures to continuously reduce the probability of their occurrence.

Maintenance professions working on equipment and systems are particularly exposed to these hazards. They are subject to numerous hazards, such as the presence of energy, harmful products, aggressive environments (noise, heat, cold, humidity, vibrations, etc.), arduous and dangerous working conditions (uncomfortable positions, confined environments, work at height, stress, etc.), and studies carried out by various organizations in France and Europe all show that the occurrence of serious, even fatal, accidents in these professions is well above average. In fact, the accident and occupational illness rates in the maintenance sector are very similar to those in the building and civil engineering trades, which are unfortunately notoriously high.

The analysis of risks incurred by people carrying out maintenance activities, and more specifically preventive and corrective tasks carried out on goods (industrial, consumer, buildings and infrastructures), is based on an approach that takes into account :

• human and organizational aspects involved in setting up an organization to define a strategy, assign responsibilities, coordinate actions, facilitate communications, provide training, manage co-activities, etc. ;

• technical aspects related to the maintenance actions to be carried out, the locations where they are performed, and the equipment and systems to be maintained.

It is this second aspect that is the focus of this article, bearing in mind that good practices in work organization, which are essential to risk control, are set out in a number of documents issued by occupational health and safety organizations in particular, to which reference can be made.

The article proposes a generic method for identifying hazards, assessing risks and determining defense barriers. It is based on the following actions and developments:

• a classification of hazards into five distinct categories, structured and as complete as possible;

• the introduction of a hazard severity scale that takes into account uncertainties about the consequences of hazardous events, so as to facilitate comparisons between hazards of different kinds;

• risk ranking based on the combination of severity, vulnerability and frequency of the hazardous situation, but also on the uncertainty...