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This is a collaborative post.
Running an SME can feel quite overwhelming at times. In an area like risk management for example, even the smallest organisation still needs to take care of what feels like a staggering number of different threats and hazards. To make that process a bit easier, I’ve decided to focus on just one (albeit important) area of hazard management in this blog post – Legionella prevention. From gaining an overview of your water system to assigning responsibility to specific individuals in your company, here’s what you need to know.
Inspect your water system
Legionella pneumophila – the bacteria responsible for Legionnaires’ disease – can only grow to dangerous concentrations when given quite specific environmental conditions. Namely, this consists of stagnant water between about 20-45 degrees centigrade (with the bacteria being unable to grow at all above 60 degrees centigrade.)
In light of this, preventing Legeionalla comes down to preventing these conditions from occurring in your premises’ water systems. This normally means working with a specialist risk assessor, who can thoroughly inspect your plumbing and then provide advice on any changes that need to be made.
Keeping on top of documentation
While risk management in general, and Legionella prevention more specifically isn’t purely bureaucratic, documentation does play a central role, especially when it comes to staying on top of things.
Your water safety plan, for example, will cover your general approach to all matters related to water hygiene, while your Legionella written scheme will focus primarily on just the risk posed by Legionella.
These documents provide a centralised space in which you can organise your overarching strategy, making it much easier to see what it is that you’re actually doing to prevent things like Legionnaires’ disease.
Understand your legal obligations
Water hygiene isn’t just some nice optional extra that you can choose to offer to your employees. It’s a very clear legal obligation to provide people on most kinds of premises with access to clean, potable water to both drink and wash themselves with where necessary.
In most cases, the key document to consult when considering regulatory requirements will be the Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations 1992. That being said, there may be other regulations covering your business as well, depending on the niche you work in.
Assigning responsibility
With safety issues such as Legionella prevention, responsibility isn’t evenly distributed throughout your organisation. Instead, there will be certain people who bear responsibility for specific duties. In the context of Legionella (and water hygiene more generally), this will be outlined in your water safety plan, and also in your Legionella written scheme.
Making sure that everyone is clearly aware of their responsibilities – and sufficiently trained and experienced to deal with them – should be a top priority at all times. As you update your schemes and plans and responsibilities shift, you’ll need to come back to this.
By covering these basic areas, you should be able to prevent Legionella-related incidents efficiently in most environments. With smaller businesses in particular, that have fewer resources to waste, mitigating these kinds of risks using efficient solutions should be a key priority.