Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations (PUWER)
A recent health and safety breach, where a worker was involved in a fatal accident, made me think about putting this article together. Basically the person, who was new to his company was pressure testing a hydraulic cylinder.
The cylinder cracked and a piece of metal violently hit his head causing the fatality. The company were fined £800,000 and ordered to pay costs of around £28,000. They had failed to provide adequate supervision and simply inform the worker of the safe working pressure for the cylinder being tested.
The investigation also found that the company failed to have protective screens in place to prevent projectiles injuring staff. They also did not exclude other people from the test area. They were prosecuted under; Regulation 3 of the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations (not having a suitable risk assessment) and Regulation 12 of PUWER, which I wanted to highlight. Below is a snap shot of that Regulation:
Protection against specified hazards
12. (1) Every employer shall take measures to ensure that the exposure of a person using work equipment to any risk to his health or safety from any hazard specified in paragraph (3) is either prevented, or, where that is not reasonably practicable, adequately controlled. (2) The measures required by paragraph (1) shall— (a) be measures other than the provision of personal protective equipment or of information, instruction, training and supervision, so far as is reasonably practicable; and (b) include, where appropriate, measures to minimise the effects of the hazard as well as to reduce the likelihood of the hazard occurring. (3) The hazards referred to in paragraph (1) are— (a) any article or substance falling or being ejected from work equipment; (b) rupture or disintegration of parts of work equipment; (c) work equipment catching fire or overheating; (d) the unintended or premature discharge of any article or of any gas, dust, liquid, vapour or other substance which, in each case, is produced, used or stored in the work equipment; (e) the unintended or premature explosion of the work equipment or any article or substance produced, used or stored in it. (4) For the purposes of this regulation “adequately” means adequately having regard only to the nature of the hazard and the nature and degree of exposure to the risk.
PPE not the only solution
So, depending on the task, this regulation is stating that PPE is not always the only solution to protect your workers, neither is training. You may have to apply further controls to protect your staff.
You can imagine, that paragraph 3 (a-e), a worker will not be protected from simple PPE and training. The incident above highlighted the need for physical barriers, but you can use this part of the regulation to decide on the best form of control for all your tasks involving work equipment in your workplace.
When did you last have a risk assessment?
This is why a review of your risk assessments and procedures is absolutely vital to your operations. The need for near miss reporting is paramount to your review process.
Communicating your incident reporting procedure/policy to your staff is extremely important for reporting near misses and other incidents. So, you can contact Quest to help with your management systems and help you determine your control measures.
However, remember that you are the expert in your field and your staff are the experts at the coalface and will know when something doesn’t feel or look right. This is where your engagement with the staff will highlight to you how well your systems work.
Contact us for more information on PUWER or other health and safety matters or to take a health & safety health check.
