22.01.2020

Wednesday mornings carry most risk

Following an analysis of environmental, health and safety data over the past four years, Irish crane rental and heavy lift company Wm O’Brien, has found that the most likely time for its team members to have an incident/accident is on Wednesday morning.
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Tracking statistics from 2016 to 2019, the company has shown that the risk of an accident occurring on a Wednesday is 21 percent compared to Fridays, where the risk of an accident drops to 11 percent. According to the statistics, Friday is the least likely for an incident, which flies in the face of the previous Vertikal indications that suggested Friday at midday holds the highest risk.

The O’Brien data benefits from comparing events within a single company and team of people while also covering the full range of incidents. The Vertikal data in comparison is global and only includes very serious incidents that have a relatively high profile.
O'Brien's data also shows that incidents are more likely to occur in the morning, rather than the afternoon.
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John Enright, head of environmental health and safety at the company, said: “We were genuinely surprised at the findings as logically we thought it would more likely be the start or end of the week, but the data shows that people can potentially be more complacent about things in the middle of the week. In response to the findings, we are actively biasing extra safety activities, inspections and toolbox talks towards the middle of the week.”

“For the last four years we have maintained our goal of Zero Harm with no reportable accidents across all company activities. We know that it’s the attention to detail and the small things that matter when it comes to ongoing safety and we constantly encourage the team to never get complacent when it comes to working safely.”

The figures were taken from the company’s events register where all near misses, good catches, incidents and accidents are tracked in line with its integrated management system.

So be careful today!