The #1 Overlooked Factor in Preventing Industrial Accidents on the Prairies
Think PPE is enough? The #1 overlooked safety factor in industrial plants isn’t equipment or training—it’s maintenance. Too often, hazard checks get skipped when the pressure’s on, and that’s when accidents happen. This article shows how ignoring maintenance in your safety planning leads to real-world incidents—and gives you practical steps to build hazard identification and equipment care directly into your safety protocols.
Task-Level Hazard Identification (Especially for Non-Routine Work)
If you ask a millwright what hurts people, you’ll hear familiar answers: rotating equipment, stored energy, line breaks, pinch points, mobile equipment, winter conditions. We train on them, we post signs, we buy PPE. And yet incidents still happen—often when a “simple job” becomes anything but.
Across Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba, one preventive practice consistently separates safe days from bad ones: taking the time—before this task, in these conditions—to identify the real hazards and choose the right controls. In safety language, that’s field-level hazard identification and risk assessment (FLHA) or job safety/hazard analysis (JSA/JHA). It’s required by law, endorsed by Canadian authorities, and still the step that’s most often skipped, rushed, or treated as a checkbox.
Why It’s Overlooked
We confuse “familiar” with “safe.” Routine jobs lull us. The human brain automates what it can; we stop seeing hazards we’ve worked around a hundred times. That’s exactly when a small change in any industrial machine maintenance —different product, different weather, different contractor—invalidates yesterday’s controls.
Non-routine work changes the risk picture. Startups, shutdowns, jam clears, swaps, and troubleshooting force people into the line of fire. Research across industrial sectors shows accident rates spike during non-routine tasks—not because workers stop caring, but because hazards aren’t re-identified and controls aren’t adapted to the new task steps.
Paper over practice. Many sites have great forms. Fewer have great conversations. A three-minute, heads-up field talk that actually maps out the job often does more to prevent harm than a perfect form done at a desk.
Schedule pressure. The Prairies run on uptime: ag processing during harvest, potash and energy projects with tight windows, maintenance crammed into short outages. When the plan slips, the first thing to go is the pre-task hazard check. That’s backwards. A fast, focused FLHA protects schedule by preventing the unplanned outage everyone dreads.
What “Good” Looks Like for Millwright Work
A solid task-level hazard identification has three parts:
Break the job into steps. “Lock out the pump, pull the reducer, swap the coupling, test run.” Write it down.
Spot hazards per step. Energy (electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, thermal, chemical, gravity), stored product, line pressure, confined space, working at height, mobile equipment, hot work, ergonomics, weather, and adjacent operations.
Choose controls using the hierarchy. Eliminate > substitute > engineer > administrate > PPE. For millwrights, that often means verify zero energy, install physical barriers/blocks, standardize procedures, then add permits and PPE on top.
Canada’s national guidance makes this sequence explicit: identify hazards for the specific task, assess the risk, and implement controls; review and monitor as conditions change. This isn’t optional—it’s the foundation of every effective safety program.
The Hazard Family That Bites the Hardest: Energy
If there’s a single topic millwrights should double-weight during hazard identification, it’s hazardous energy. Canadian standards and regulators are unambiguous: lockout is the primary method to protect workers during servicing and maintenance. Where full lockout is infeasible, equivalent protective methods are tightly defined—not improvised. The analysis must identify all energy sources and isolation points for this job, not just the usual main.
Millwright-specific traps we see on the Prairies:
Residual pressure or stored energy: compressed air in accumulators, product head on long lines, charged hydraulics that “relax” after you crack a fitting.
Gravity and potential energy: suspended loads drifting while pins are out; tensioned belts; spring-loaded valves.
Hidden electrical sources: VFDs with DC bus energy; “control” circuits that can energize solenoids even when the main is open.
Adjacent equipment: the line two bays over starts a cycle and transmits motion through a shared shaft or chain.
Every one of these hazards should appear on the FLHA/JSA when the steps involve exposure, with a control noted (blocks, bleed-down, verified isolation, test for zero energy, physical separation, LOTOTO where required).
Prairie Realities to Bake Into the Assessment
Weather: −30°C steel behaves differently; gloves and balaclavas reduce dexterity and line of sight; ice and snow add fall and pinch hazards. Heat and wildfire smoke do the same in summer.
Remote locations: response times are longer; that elevates risk category for the same task—more conservative controls are justified.
Agriculture & bulk handling: grain dust (explosive), augers and drags (entanglement), confined spaces (oxygen displacement).
Potash and oil & gas: corrosion, brine, H₂S potential, heavy mobile equipment, pressurized systems—often during non-routine work like line breaks and swaps.
A good FLHA accounts for these context hazards, not just the equipment hazards.
A 10-Minute Field-Level Hazard ID That Actually Prevents Incidents (PDF checklist)
Use this quick, high-yield script before any non-routine task, maintenance and repair work, or whenever the job changed from the plan:
Assemble the crew at the job site with the permit and procedure (if you have one). If you don’t, agree you’re writing a one-off procedure now from the steps you list.
Map the steps. Big steps, not micro-steps—3–8 is right.
Run “CHESS” against each step:
Change (from normal?), Hazards (by type), Energy (all sources), Surroundings (people, vehicles, weather), Safeguards (controls by hierarchy).Name the energy isolations you will use, then verify zero energy (try-start/test) and block where gravity or stored energy exists.
Assign roles (watcher/spotter, isolation verifier, standby for confined space, fire watch for hot work).
Communicate triggers to stop and reassess (scope change, new contractor arrives, weather change, tool change).
Sign and keep the FLHA/JSA with the permit—and update it if any trigger happens.
This flow lines up with national guidance and Prairie requirements (requirements in Alberta are similar to other prairie provinces) for hazard assessment and hazard control programs.
Examples: Where Things Go Wrong (and How Hazard ID Prevents It)
1) VFD-Driven Pump Coupling Swap (Shop Bay, January)
Missed hazard: DC bus energy retained after main disconnect; gravity on pump skid while bolts out.
Controls via FLHA: wait time + meter test on DC bus; mechanical blocking of skid; LOTOTO at MCC and local e-stop isolation; 3-point verification before breaking coupling guard.
2) Grain Elevator Head Pulley Cleanout (Harvest Rush)
Missed hazard: product bridging releases suddenly; adjacent leg backfeeds rotation; dust explosibility.
Controls via FLHA: full lockout of all drives including adjacent leg; test for zero energy and physical chocks at pulley; dust control and hot work restrictions; confined space permit with standby.
3) Potash Brine Line Break-In
Missed hazard: trapped head pressure between remote valves; chemical exposure; slippery footing; nearby loader traffic.
Controls via FLHA: double isolation and bleed; verify zero pressure; barricade and spotter; winter footwear and hand protection selection; pre-task radio call to mobile equipment operators.
In each case, the difference between “almost” and “incident” is whether the team identified the actual hazards for the exact task before starting.
Supervisors: Your Multiplier
Front-line leaders determine whether FLHAs are pencil-whipped or performed with intent. Three practices make the biggest difference:
Coach the conversation, not the form. Ask “What’s different today?” “What could go wrong on this step?”
Audit for energy verification. Don’t accept “locked out” without try-start/test/bleed-down.
Reward stop-work calls. If someone pauses on a scope change, back them publicly and fix the plan.
Leading Indicators to Track
If you measure these, incidents will go down:
% of non-routine tasks with a documented FLHA/JSA that lists all energy sources and verification steps.
of scope-change pauses recorded (aim for >0—if it’s zero, folks might be pushing through).
% of supervisors observed facilitating the FLHA conversation at the job site.
Corrective actions from incident investigations that tie to missed hazard identification—and whether similar tasks now have updated JSAs.
Legal & Standards Backbone (for your policy page)
CCOHS—Risk Assessment and Hazard Control: foundation guidance on identifying hazards specific to tasks and applying the hierarchy of controls.
Alberta OHS Code, Part 2—Hazard Assessment, Elimination and Control: formal and field-level requirements.
Government of Saskatchewan—Hazard Identification & Risk Assessment Guideline: key element of the provincial H&S system.
SAFE Work Manitoba—Hazard Identification & Risk Control Training Program Standard: minimum training requirements.
CSA Z460 / SCC Notice—Control of Hazardous Energy: lockout as the primary method; other methods only when criteria are met.
Bottom Line for Millwright Industries
The machines construction millwrights build, align, and repair will always carry energy. The Prairies will always throw weather and distance at them. The most reliable way to prevent injuries isn’t a new gadget—it’s doing a fast, focused task-level hazard identification before non-routine work and whenever the plan changes, and then controlling hazardous energy exactly as the job demands that day.
If your team makes that habit non-negotiable, you’ll prevent the incidents that most people call “bad luck.”
If all of this is leaving you questioning some of your own policies and procedures, please feel free to contact Custom Millwright Services. We can give you clear directions on maintaining your facilities in the safest and most productive ways. We offer a full range of maintenance and repair services!
Finally, we can ensure that your equipment is maintained to the highest degree, ensuring its longevity and the continued safety of your valuable employees!