Information, Formation and Training for the Maintenance Operations: the Lesson Learned from Fatal Accidents

Abstract

The list of possible machinery / equipment-related injuries is as long as it is worrying; they represent a non-negligible part of the total accidents in most industrial sectors, in terms of both numbers and severity, in normal conditions and during the maintenance operations (maintenance being the keeping of items or equipments in serviceable conditions to guarantee reliability and safety; it includes both corrective and preventive activities, and can be carried out in all sectors and workplaces). Table 1 brings into evidence that these criticalities are quite common in the case of construction machineries / equipment. Lack of maintenance or inadequate maintenance can lead to dangerous situations, accidents and health problems; but, at the same time, maintenance itself is a high-risk activity due to special hazards resulting from the particular nature of the work. Moreover, the workers involved are more likely than other employees directly exposed to the risks, since direct contact between the worker and the machinery to be maintained cannot be substantially reduced. For this reason, the maintenance operations should be managed by properly formed and trained operators, to avoid incorrect actions that could generate unscheduled production stops or injuries. On the basis of in-deep analyses on fatal accidents, carried out within Prosecutor investigations, the intermediate events chain and the root causes are here discussed, together with the possible prevention actions of both the direct consequences of incorrect operations, and the indirect consequences due to poor inspection and maintenance of earthmoving machines. Table 1: A review of accident data referred to 103 workers (Camisassi et al., 2006). In Italy, the fatal injuries in loading/haulage and material handling operations are related to the machinery, material and people transportation both in mining (20 ÷ 30 % of the total fatal injuries) and in road/railway constructions sector (25 ÷ 30 % of the total injuries); otherwise in the U.S. mining sector the fatal injuries are almost related to the handling material and powered haulage machineries in the range of 30 ÷ 35 %, while in road / railway constructions sector the 30 ÷ 35 % of the fatalities are connected to the pedestrians stuck-by vehicles and vehicle rollovers.