Health and Safety Executive

The European Good Practice Awards 2010 - Safe Maintenance

The European Agency invites nominations for this year’s European Good Practice Awards.

What are the awards?

The Awards aim to demonstrate, by example, the benefits of following good safety and health practices to all European employers and workers, intermediaries including the social partners, OSH professionals and practitioners and others providing assistance and information at the workplace level.

Those selected will be recognised for their role in improving working conditions in Europe.
In addition:

  • a representative of the selected enterprises/organisations will be invited to the European awards ceremony in spring 2011;
  • the examples will be presented in an Agency booklet to be widely distributed across Europe and on the EU-OSHA website.

The Awards will be given in two categories:  for workplaces employing fewer than 100 workers, and those with 100 or more workers.

What types of good practice can be entered?

The 2010–11 award scheme will recognise companies or organisations that have made outstanding and innovative contributions to promoting an integrated management approach to safe maintenance.  Maintenance can be defined as working on something to keep it in a working and safe state and preserving it from failure or decline. The ‘something’ could be a workplace, work equipment or means of transport (e.g. ships). Two main types of maintenance can be distinguished as follows:

  • Preventive/proactive maintenance: carried out to keep something functional. This type of activity is usually planned and scheduled in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions.
  • Corrective/reactive maintenance: repairing something to get it working again. This is an unscheduled, unplanned task, usually associated with more hazards and higher risk levels.

Good practice examples are implemented solutions – not theoretical or hypothetical – to promote the effective management of occupational safety and health risks related to maintenance activities at the workplace. Applicants should therefore provide clear evidence of what has been done in practice to develop and implement structured and safe
maintenance practices.

The intervention should show good management practice to:

  • improve working conditions in general;
  • promote a structured, risk management based approach to maintenance;
  • be effective in promoting health, safety and efficiency;
  • focus on eliminating or preventing risks at source;
  • achieve an identifiable and permanent benefit;
  • meet the relevant legislative requirements and preferably go beyond those minimum standards;
  • include a participatory approach of employers and workers;
  • have the full support of senior management;
  • be clearly identifiable as the action that caused the reduction in risk.

What should the examples demonstrate?

The good practice examples should demonstrate:

  • relevance to the theme of safe maintenance;
  • interventions aimed at the workplace;
  • risks eliminated or tackled at source;
  • an effective, pragmatic, structured approach to maintenance;
  • successful implementation;
  • real improvements;
  • effective participation and involvement of the workforce and their representatives;
  • account taken of the diversity of the workforce;
  • sustainability over time;
  • going beyond simple compliance with all relevant legislative requirements;
  • the possibility of transfer to other workplaces,including those in other Member States and to SMEs;
  • currency, i.e. the example should be recent or not widely publicised.

Good practice examples should not have been developed solely for commercial profit. This particularly relates to products, tools or services that are or could be marketed. Examples focused on the individual, such as training, should also demonstrate how they are part of a wider risk management approach to maintenance.

Who can take part?

Good practice examples will be accepted from enterprises or including:

  • individual enterprises, from which entries are particularly welcomed;
  • enterprises or organisations within the product, equipment or personnel supply chain;
  • training providers and the education community;
  • employer organisations, trade associations, trade unions and non-governmental organisations;
  • regional or local occupational health and safety prevention services, insurance services and other intermediary organisations

HSE can only accept entries from the UK.

Closing date

The closing date was 17 September 2010. The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work will announce the winners in Budapest on 28 April 2011. All UK entrants will be informed of the result of their entry

The next European Good Practice Awards (which will be on a different topic) is likely to be open for entries from early 2012 to late summer 2012.

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Updated 24.02.11