Checking your walkways

Check for suitable walkways .Are they in the right place? Are they being used? Are they available for use? What tasks are taking place on the walkway? Are some tasks preventing the employee from seeing where he or she is going?

Lessons

Walkways must be safe to walk over at all times. Confronted with tasks carrying loads of tools or boxes in hand, employees should have the confidence that you and your co.workers have housekeeping elements embedded in their work operation. This can be done by well described company policies and procedures, which should be implemented through company campaigns and brought into the company culture by training for all employees. By keeping walkways safe and clean, employees’ experience free walkways with no clutter. Well.marked and obstructed repair sites will have better visibility during construction, maintenance or turnaround activities.

Do you already have enough policies and procedures, but still want to improve the bottom line by safe work attitude adjustment? Try to apply a teach.by.example approach. For example, a refinery with many contractors, different job requirements and safety policies may pressure the workers to cut corners by not following these company guidelines and procedures. “Employees often work under high pressure, creating unsafe situations and unwanted costly accidents as a result,” says Lodewijk Westerbeek van Eerten, Director of Westmark BV, manufacturer of Cablesafe safety hooks. He explains that a turnaround manager at a refinery hired a low paid student for work place improvement. “They had this guy constantly walk around with a backpack full of hooks and let him try to find as many items as possible to hook up. Cheap, simple and effective, introducing this ‘improvement.by.example, not requirement’ did not only provide an immediate result, but it had a positive influence in the way employees worked safer in an unobstructed work environment.”

Keeping walkways safe and clean At some sites, as well as over 30% of injuries are caused by slips, trips and falls. Industry statistics confirm this. The British Ceramics Confederation did research on this topic and found that when accidents happen, employees are absent from work. This puts pressure on families, costs money, and hurts the bottom line. Could all of this be avoided? Lost time injuries by slips, trips and falls are often simple prevent and can improve the companies’ incident ratings in the short term.

Housekeeping simply improves the workplace for others, who can in their turn dedicate time to focus on their core jobs and appreciate not having to sort their cables and hoses out in the end. A benefit is that hoses and cables do not wear as fast by passing traffic, resulting in fewer spills.