German Ordinance on Industrial Safety and Health (Betriebssicherheitsverordnung). Governs the provision, operation and inspection of work equipment and installations subject to monitoring in Germany. Basis for risk assessments and inspection intervals.
The German Ordinance on Industrial Safety and Health (Betriebssicherheitsverordnung, BetrSichV) sets out how work equipment must be provided, operated, maintained and inspected. Work equipment means tools, devices, machines and installations, plus installations subject to monitoring, which chiefly means elevators, installations in potentially explosive atmospheres and pressure installations. The duties fall on the employer. Under § 2(3), anyone who uses an installation subject to monitoring for commercial or economic purposes is treated like an employer. That can also reach a landlord who runs an elevator in a building.
The structure follows the life of a piece of equipment. Before use comes the risk assessment (§ 3). During operation, the duty to maintain the equipment (§ 10) and to instruct employees at least once a year (§ 12) apply. Then come inspections before first use, after modifications that require an inspection, and at regular intervals (§§ 14 to 16), together with records (§§ 14 and 17). Annex 2 contains the inspection rules for installations subject to monitoring. For elevators, the interval for the main inspection may not exceed two years, with an intermediate inspection halfway in between.
For cost, liability and deadlines, the Ordinance is the most important basis in daily practice. It determines which inspections you have to pay for and who may carry them out, an approved inspection body or a person competent to carry out inspections. Violations of individual duties are administrative offenses (§ 22). After an incident, only what you can prove helps you. A maintenance contract relieves you of the work itself but does not change the fact that the duties stay with you. The Ordinance governs operation. How a product must be built is a matter of product law, for example the Machinery Regulation or the Pressure Equipment Directive.
What matters
- Keep a list of all work equipment and installations subject to monitoring and note for each who has to inspect it: an approved inspection body or a competent person.
- Set inspection intervals in the risk assessment and stay within the maximum intervals in Annex 2.
- Keep inspection reports and certificates where you can produce them immediately if an authority asks.
- Document the annual instruction with the date and the names of the people instructed.
- Before every conversion and every major repair, ask whether it is a modification that requires an inspection.
Suppose an operator takes over an office building with two elevators and a compressed air tank. First he builds an asset list and enters, for each asset, the type of inspection, the inspecting body and the due month. For the elevators, a main inspection and an intermediate inspection alternate. For the tank, he works out through the risk assessment which intervals apply. Along the way he notices that the maintenance contract does not cover the inspections at all. He orders them separately and puts the dates in his calendar.
In the original wording
“The employer must take maintenance measures so that work equipment complies with the applicable safety and health requirements throughout its entire period of use and is kept in a safe condition.”
Unofficial translation