Maintenance & PUWER Regs 5, 6: Risk-Based Reliability

15 Jun

Relevant PUWER Regulations:

Regulation 5 – Maintenance
Regulation 6 – Inspection

Summary:

Safety is dynamic. Machines degrade, processes drift. Maintenance is not just about uptime; it's about sustaining safe conditions. PUWER demands that equipment is kept safe – and that means risk-aware maintenance.

Once systems are designed with functional safety principles, the benefits extend far beyond risk reduction. You gain a platform that enables performance and makes downtime more predictable, manageable, and preventable.

Here’s how it works:

✅ Failure modes are identified and understood during risk assessment (e.g., FMEA), giving you insight into what will fail, how, and what the impact will be.
🧠 Reasonably foreseeable faults are planned for — not just in documentation, but in real-world strategies: spare parts availability, bypass protocols, and response checklists.
🔧 Critical spare parts are defined and stocked, reducing unplanned outage durations and procurement delays.
📊 Condition-based monitoring drives proactive interventions. Instead of relying on calendar-based maintenance, your strategy is built around data and degradation trends.
🛠 A robust maintenance and inspection program sustains the safety and performance of your equipment — not just to stay legal, but to stay operational.

The Result?

You don’t just reduce risk — you gain time.

Time to:

Plan non-urgent repairs and upgrades
Avoid reactive firefighting
Free up capacity for continuous improvement
Make long-term decisions instead of short-term fixes

This is where uptime improvement becomes measurable — when you go from controlling chaos to managing strategy.

Deeper Insight:

Effective maintenance:

Prevents failure of safety systems
Detects degradation before it leads to exposure
Prioritizes based on consequence of failure

Reliability engineering tools such as:

FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis)
Criticality assessments
Condition-based monitoring

can ensure resources are focused where risk is greatest.

Best Practices:

Track failure data to refine inspection frequencies
Ensure work is logged and auditable for PUWER compliance

Strategic Insight:

Maintenance is your insurance policy. It ensures the risk reduction measures you invested in continue to perform. Ignore it, and risk creeps back in silently.

mike hewson