Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

11.5.2 Inspection under PUWER
Complex equipment and/or high-risk equipment will prob-
ably need a maintenance log and may require a more rigid 
inspection regime to ensure continued safe operation. 
This is covered by PUWER 98, Regulation 6.
PUWER requires that where safety is dependent on 
the installation conditions and/or the work equipment 
is exposed to conditions causing deterior 
ation, which 
may result in a signifi 
cant risk and a dangerous 
situation developing, that the equipment is inspected 
by a competent person. In this case the competent 
person would normally be an employee, but there may 
be circumstances like fairground equipment, where an 
outside competent person would be used.
The inspection must be done:
➤
after installation for the fi rst time
➤
after assembly at a new site or in a new location and 
thereafter
➤
at suitable intervals and
➤
each time exceptional circumstances occur which 
could affect safety.
Figure 11.5
Typical maintenance notice.
Maintenance management schemes can be based 
around a number of techniques designed to focus on 
those parts which deteriorate and need to be maintained 
to prevent health and safety risks. These techniques 
include:
➤
preventative planned maintenance
– which involves 
replacing parts and consumables or making neces-
sary adjustments at preset intervals, normally set by 
the manufacturer, so that there are no hazards cre-
ated by component deterioration or failure. Vehicles 
are normally maintained on this basis
➤
condition based maintenance
– this involves moni-
toring the condition of critical parts and carrying out 
maintenance whenever necessary to avoid hazards 
which could otherwise occur
➤