Staying safe when dealing with the out of the ordinary

Wednesday August 10, 2022

If you run a business, you’ll know the importance of solid risk assessments. Recognising the most common dangers in your workplace and taking steps to mitigate them is a vital part of keeping your employees safe. But what about less common risks?

No matter how well you prepare, things can always take you by surprise. While you can’t plan for every eventuality, you can create systems of work that are flexible enough to deal with unforeseen events. Here are some steps that you can take to prepare for the unexpected.

Beware of non-routine work

Most of the work carried out by your employees will be part of their normal routine. They will have had plenty of practice and training to ensure that they perform these tasks as safely as possible. Unforeseen danger comes when they have to deviate from their usual actions. There may be increased vulnerability to serious accidents, as several recent events have shown.

In 2018, an engineer was crushed to death by a piston while performing welding work on the underside of a hydraulic press. The HSE’s investigation found that part of the machine had been lifted by two forklift trucks without a proper lifting plan in place. It also found that the company had failed to carry out a proper risk assessment for the press, which it had acquired recently.

In another case, an electrical engineer died from carbon monoxide poisoning while trying to fix an industrial transformer. The HSE found that there was no coolant in the transformer, even though it was supposed to contain 2,500 litres of mineral oil. This caused it to overheat and release a lethal dose of carbon monoxide. Inspectors also found that there were no warning signs attached to the equipment to remind workers to check the oil level.

How can I make unusual tasks safer?

Both of these incidents highlight the importance of carrying out proper checks before performing tasks outside of your normal routine. HSE inspector Steven Boyd says that taking the time to consider new risks is the key to keeping everyone safe:

‘If you’re working on something you don’t have much experience of, you need to take a step back and say: “What are the hazards we’re dealing with here? What risks do they create? How can we adequately control those risks?”’

You can do this in a number of ways:

  • Recognise when your workers will have to perform an unusual task.
  • Create a separate risk assessment for this task with input from your employees.
  • Use this risk assessment to design a safe system of work that is specific to the new task.
  • Supervise the task to ensure that workers follow the plan.
  • Get feedback from the workers who performed the task, and update the plan if anything seems unsafe.
  • Repeat this process for every new task, or whenever an existing task changes.

The main thing is to take your time. If you have any doubts about carrying out an unusual task, don’t hesitate to ask for our advice. We can help you to create a risk assessment, plan a safe system of work and make sure that the job is performed as safely as possible. So next time you face something out of the ordinary, give us a call.

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