Risk Assessment for Field and Mobile Workers

Risk assessment for mobile workers: why is a fixed list not enough?

An air-conditioning service technician works on a factory roof in the morning, in an apartment in the afternoon and in a restaurant kitchen in the evening. In the same day they face the risks of work at height, electricity, chemical refrigerants, traffic and working alongside the customer’s staff. The company’s risk assessment, however, describes only the workshop and office at headquarters. A risk assessment for mobile workers is carried out to close this gap.

The employer’s obligation is not limited to the walls of the workplace:

Under Art. 4 of Law No. 6331 on Occupational Health and Safety, the employer is obliged to ensure workers’ health and safety in relation to work and carries out or has carried out a risk assessment. The Law’s definition of the workplace also covers places attached to the workplace, annexes and vehicles.
The Regulation on OHS Risk Assessment does not make a specific method mandatory; it requires a method suited to the workplace and the work to be chosen. This flexibility allows you to build a task-based structure for field work.
An accident suffered by a worker sent outside the workplace on duty can count as an occupational accident. We explained which situations are covered in our article on situations treated as occupational accidents.

Field staff safety: three layers of risk

For field staff safety, think of risks in three layers. Control of each layer is in different hands.

Layer	Typical hazards	Who controls it?	Basic measure
The work itself	Electricity, work at height, heavy lifting, hand tools, chemicals	Employer and team leader	Task instructions, training, suitable equipment and PPE
Customer site	Running machinery, forklift traffic, confined spaces, other teams’ work, aggressive customers	Together with the customer	Exchange of information in advance, site induction, permit to work, clarity on authority to isolate energy
Vehicle, road and lone working	Traffic accidents, fatigue, load shifting, inability to call for help	Employer and worker	Driving rules, load securing, communication protocol

This table is the skeleton of your risk assessment document. Each field task (installation, periodic maintenance, breakdown, survey, delivery) is written up across these three layers.

Working on customer sites: coordination comes first

Most of the risk of working on customer sites arises from the two businesses not informing each other sufficiently. Art. 23 of Law No. 6331 requires employers sharing the same work area to cooperate on OHS measures, coordinate their activities to prevent risks and inform each other. Take this into the field as follows:

Ask for information before the job. Find out from the customer the specific risks of the area where the work will be done, the access rules, the emergency assembly point and the person in charge. For regular customers, record this information on a customer card.
Report your own risks. If you will be welding, cutting, using chemicals or doing noisy work, tell the customer in advance; the customer’s workers are also affected by your risk.
Clarify the authority to isolate energy. Who will isolate the energy of the machine to be maintained, who will fit the lock, and who will keep the key? If this question is unanswered, work does not start.
Follow the customer’s permit system. If the customer has a permit form for hot work, work at height or confined spaces, it is completed; if not, you use your own form.
Record the site induction. The site rules training given by the customer is entered in the technician’s file.

We explained the legal and practical aspects of coordination in our article on more than one employer in the same work area, and the customer’s perspective in contractor induction and permits.

Service technician risk analysis: vehicles and roads

When carrying out a service technician risk analysis, it is often forgotten that the longest exposure is spent behind the wheel. Treat the vehicle as part of the job too:

Driving and rest times: The rules in Art. 98 of the Highway Traffic Regulation of a maximum of 9 hours in 24 hours and a 45-minute break after 4.5 hours of uninterrupted driving cover commercial goods vehicles with a maximum weight above 3.5 tonnes and commercial passenger vehicles carrying more than 9 people including the driver. These limits do not apply directly to the light commercial vehicles used by service technicians; we recommend that you set similar rules as company policy.
Work schedule: If the daily job list is written without taking travel time into account, the technician will either speed or skip breaks. The person planning the schedule is also a party to the risk assessment.
Load and equipment: Ladders, cylinders, tool bags and spare parts in the vehicle can be thrown into the cab under sudden braking. Use racking, tie-downs and bulkheads; carry cylinders upright and secured. For load securing principles, see our article on load securing on lorries and trucks.
Phone: Communication with the customer and headquarters is done while the vehicle is parked, not while driving.

Our article on company drivers and chauffeurs provides a detailed framework for driver selection, health and vehicle maintenance.

Lone working and the communication protocol

A significant proportion of field staff work alone. Lone working is not prohibited in itself; but some jobs should not be done alone, and a communication arrangement is needed for everyone who works alone:

Write down the jobs that are not done alone: Confined space entry, working on live electrical panels, work at height that may require rescue and manual lifting of heavy loads are the main ones.
Arrival and departure notification: The technician sends headquarters a short message on arriving at and leaving the site. If no message comes within the set time, headquarters calls; if they cannot reach the technician, predefined steps begin.
Signal coverage: Additional measures are defined for places without phone signal, such as basements, plant rooms and rural sites.
Risk of aggression: The possibility of encountering a tense customer in homes and workplaces is written into the risk assessment; the technician is expressly given the right to stop work and leave.

For example protocols, see our article on lone worker safety.

The five-minute check on site: dynamic risk assessment

The document at headquarters cannot know every site in advance. Before starting work, the technician should ask themselves the following questions and tick the answers on a short card:

Does the job to be done match the information I was given?
Is there energy, pressure or moving parts; who isolated them, and who has the lock?
Is there access requiring a separate permit, such as height, a confined space or a roof?
Is there another team, forklift traffic or customer staff nearby?
Where will I exit in an emergency, whom will I inform, and does my phone have signal?
Are my equipment and PPE suitable and complete for this job?

If any question is answered “no” or “not sure”, work does not start; the technician calls headquarters or the customer’s person in charge. Cards are collected weekly, and frequently ticked problems are fed back into the main document. For a more detailed job step analysis, the job safety analysis (JSA) method can be used.

Field team risk analysis: how is it written in the document?

Build the field team risk analysis document by task, not by business department:

Task list: Each task, such as installation, periodic maintenance, breakdown response, survey and delivery, becomes a separate heading.
Site types: Additional risks for site types such as factories, construction sites, homes, open areas and public buildings are added as rows.
Common section: Vehicles, lone working, the communication protocol and the PPE set are written once for all tasks.
Health: Tasks such as driving and work at height are taken into account in the workplace physician’s fitness-for-work assessment.
Updating: An accident, a near miss, a new type of customer, new equipment or a recurring finding on the check cards is sufficient reason to update the document.

We covered risks specific to work such as lifts, air conditioning and furniture installation in our articles on lift maintenance technicians, HVAC and air-conditioning technicians and furniture delivery and installation teams. For the general steps, see our article on how to carry out a risk assessment. For teams working in the field in Bursa and neighbouring provinces, preparing the task-based document and setting up the check card is part of our risk assessment service; you can track update dates with the OHS calendar.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is responsible for the risk on the customer’s site?

Each employer is responsible for its own workers; the service company manages the technician’s safety and the customer manages the risks of its own facility. When working in the same area, the two employers cooperate, coordinate their activities and inform each other under Art. 23 of Law No. 6331.

Is a separate risk assessment needed for each customer?

Usually not. A task-based main document, additional rows for site types and the check card completed on site together form an adequate structure. For large customers visited regularly and with specific risks, it is useful to prepare a separate customer card.

When is a second person essential for a technician working alone?

The risk assessment decides. In jobs such as confined space entry, live electrical work, work at height that may require rescue and manual handling of heavy loads, a second person or standby person is expected to be provided for.

What training should mobile workers receive?

In addition to basic OHS training, work at height, electrical safety, safe driving, customer site rules and use of the dynamic risk check card should be added to the training programme according to the work they do. Part of the training should be given in practice on site.