Running a business nowadays means taking safety seriously. Risks can arise in a wide variety of often unexpected areas, and it’s the duty of all business owners to identify those potential risks and take active steps to mitigate them.
An essential, elementary area that needs to be taken care of is the safety of the water systems in your premises. There are a number of practical measures you can take to ensure safety at all times – let’s take a look at some of the basics.
Creating & implementing a water safety plan
One of the most important things to do early on is to create a water safety plan. This will essentially act as the foundation upon which the rest of your efforts rest – a clear strategic statement of purpose on how you intend to keep your water systems safe.
Water safety plans are detailed under BS8680 – a British Standard on water safety introduced in 2020. The outline is purposefully vague, to ensure that it can be applied to as wide a group of scenarios as possible. It will, however, in most cases consist of assigning clear responsibility to certain individuals, as well as laying out the practical measures you intend on taking to keep things safe in the long run.
Risk assessments
It’s impossible to mitigate risks if you don’t know exactly what they are in the first place. That’s why it’s become common practice to use risk assessments, in order to identify areas that need taking care of.
Risk assessments are critical for water safety as well. In most cases, it will be necessary to get a qualified third-party provider to come in and test the water system present on your premises. They will then be able to identify any potential dangers, and suggest actionable steps you can take to mitigate those risks.
Employee training
While your water safety plan will include assigning responsibility to certain individuals, in many cases, it can be beneficial to provide general training to a wider range of staff as well. This doesn’t have to consist of in-depth training on certain topics – the aim is rather to help people know what to look out for when it comes to water safety, and to provide them with an easy way of reporting risks they think need looking into. There are plenty of providers that provide both in person and online training in this area, and the courses typically don’t take more than an hour or two.
Water safety isn’t something to play around with. Not only is it a clear legal requirement for most commercial premises to ensure access to safe, reliable water; but if things do go wrong, the ramifications can be catastrophic. Luckily, water hazards are relatively simple to mitigate, if you take the steps listed above. It’s important to get assistance from an experienced water hygiene service when making your water safety plan and conducting water risk assessments. These are nuanced areas, where risks can be easy to overlook.