Safety in Field Service Management
For Field Service Workers, Safety Still Lags
Field service management is not for the faint of heart. Operating complex machinery, spending long hours away from home, and working at dizzying heights requires not just skill, but guts.
Despite the nature of the work, mortal danger should not be an inherent part of the job description. Although utilities work continuously to protect their workforce safe, preventable tragedies occur far too frequently in the industry. This is especially critical across complex gas distribution networks, where field teams routinely handle high-pressure infrastructure and hazardous environments. Safety in field service management must remain a top priority. In 2021 alone, utility workers suffered 20,000 medically-consulted injuries, and these don’t include the fatal injuries that occurred.[1] According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, installation, maintenance, and repair occupations endured 475 fatalities in 2021—a 20.9 % increase from the previous year.[2] Fatal injuries among oil and gas extraction workers reached 54 during the same period.[3]
Amid global energy crises and ballooning demand for field service work, utilities must prioritize worker safety above all else. Companies that fail to demonstrate a serious commitment to employee protection face rising operational costs, severe burnout, and low morale. Ultimately, this leads to the loss of critical technical talent to competitors.
So, how can organizations make safety in field service management achievable? Digital field service management solutions empower safety through a balanced combination of predictive and corrective capabilities.
“End-to-end field service management (FSM) solutions are the best way to execute appropriate training, mitigate risks that come with field service work, and reinforce compliance.” — Matt Danna for Occupational Health and Safety, August 2022[1]
In this ebook, we’ll identify the overarching approach to field service management safety, discuss the energy industry’s core safety challenges, and highlight key FSM best practices that every utility can add to its arsenal. You can also explore how industry leaders put these principles into practice in our real-world case study.
Preventative And Corrective Safety: A Two-Pronged Approach
When we talk about applied solutions to safety in field service management, they generally fall into two categories: preventative and corrective. We will discuss those in greater detail below. [1]
Preventative Safety
The primary goal of preventive safety is to prevent or mitigate equipment or system failures before they occur. Preventive maintenance plays ahead a critical role in this approach: it keeps assets in optimal working condition to reduce safety hazards. Moreover, preventative maintenance reduces the likelihood of unexpected breakdowns, minimizes downtime, and extends overall equipment lifespan.
- Example: A field service employee conducts preventative maintenance on an electrical substation. This includes regularly inspecting power transformers for signs of overheating, testing and maintaining circuit breakers to ensure they can interrupt electrical faults safely, and clearing vegetation near power lines and substations to prevent contact.
- The Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in 2010 provides critical insights into adhering to rigorous preventative safety measures. After the explosion killed 11 people onsite and caused a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, investigators identified seven violations of federal safety standards that led to the tragedy.[1]
- Although catastrophic external events—such as the Texas freeze of 2021—cannot always be prevented, robust preventive maintenance measures lessen the impact of natural disasters by enabling utilities to respond rapidly to outages and critical failures. [1] [2]
Corrective Safety
In most instances, corrective safety (also known as reactive safety) involves repairing assets or systems after a fault or failure occurs. Catastrophic equipment failure—or even instances of slip and fall accidents—can prove highly dangerous to the responders, and corrective safety aims to keep them as safe as possible while they work to address the issue.[1] This definition holds true in field service management; however, in this ebook, corrective safety also refers to equipping field service workers with the right tools and resources to maximize safety as they work in real-time. Corrective safety aims to minimize the chances of workers encountering a dangerous situation, even after a fault or critical equipment failure.
- Example: The electrical substation has a gas leak. A field service team is dispatched to resolve the issue. Armed with a hands-free, digital field service management solution, the team can quickly access digital work instructions that provide step-by-step guidance for fixing the leak. The FSM solution also provides accountability features to ensure each team member is wearing the appropriate OSHA-mandated safety gear.
Utilities must implement both preventative and corrective measures to maintain robust safety measures in field service management.
To read more on what is stalling worker’s safety, download the full State of Safety in Field Service Management ebook.
[1] “Top Work-Related Injury Causes.” Injury Facts, National Safety Council, https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/work/work-overview/top-work-related-injury-causes/
[2] Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries Summary, 2020.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, n.d., https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nr0.htm
[3] Bureau of Labor Statistics. “Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries News Release – December 16, 2022.” U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16 Dec. 2022, https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/cfoi_12162022.htm
[4] Danna, Matt. “Field Service Management: Safety First.” Occupational Health & Safety Online, 16 Aug. 2022, https://ohsonline.com/articles/2022/08/16/field-service-management.aspx
[5] Broder, John M. “BP Shortcuts Led to Gulf Oil Spill, Report Says.” The New York Times, 15 Sep. 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/15/science/earth/15spill.html
Devin Landes is a solution engineer in the Field Service Management space; starting her career at Oracle, she has spent her time in the solution engineering space working with large enterprise FSM companies. Her focus has been on understanding the people and processes of each organization to work hand in hand with Field Service organizations in industries such as utilities, energy, manufacturing, and telecommunications to help them achieve the Field Service-led Digital Transformation Journey.