Healthy Workplaces Campaign is a pan European campaign led by the European Agency for Health and Safety at Work. This campaign will be running from 2010 and throughout the year of 2011. Before you all heave a sigh of disdain about all the health and safety campaigns and laws that are now in place, spare a thought for the twenty percent of workplace accidents that are directly related to maintenance operations. According to EUROSTAT-ESAW (European Statistics) poor equipment and poor machinery maintenance is in the top four reasons for workplace fatalities. The new campaign highlights these issues and in particular encourages companies to ensure regular maintenance and repair work is carried out to best practice guidelines. It also encourages companies to be aware that the majority of accidents happen during the repair and maintenance process.
Maintenance teams, more than most, owing to the nature of their jobs, are exposed to more workplace hazards than most. One of the hazards maintenance teams are exposed to is strenuous movements or working in awkward positions. Ensuring castors on heavy equipment and machinery are maintained and replaced is a vital part of the maintenance programme. Often castors as a component are overlooked, as the focus tends to be on the more expensive pieces of equipment and machinery. However, ignoring the maintenance of relatively inexpensive castors is done at your peril.
Castors and wheels are attached to equipment and machinery to ensure smooth and efficient manoeuvrability. If castors are over loaded, exposed to harsh chemicals, damaged by fork lift truck or pallet loaders on castors, serious damages and often failure can result. Castors on the whole are robust components; however any castor failure can have immediate impact on the smooth running in any warehouse, business or place of work. Regular maintenance of castors, by greasing the castors housing and checking the sound condition of the wheels is imperative. If any damage in the housing or wheel is identified immediate action to replace these castors is required. Replacement castors are easily sourced and a wide variety of shapes, styles and materials are available to suit all requirements.
The Healthy Workplaces campaign highlights hazards for maintenance teams, and offers practical solutions to businesses. Basics and best practices on how to do safe maintenance is a must read for most businesses. There are several common principles, one of which is ensuring the right equipment is available to the maintenance teams. Ensuring teams can access replacement castors are a must to ensure the safety of the team. Musculoskeletal disorders are common place and especially in high occurrences amongst maintenance teams. So making any heavy equipment and machinery more manoeuvrable ensures no extra force or strain is required to relocate it. In order to get the message across the Healthy Workplace campaign has a wealth of information on their web site and encourages businesses to support the campaign. The campaign also has the backing of the European Parliament and the European Commission. With such heavyweight supporters the campaign will run successfully until November 2011.