Meet Industrial Pipe Safety Standards with Maintenance Best Practices

Technician inspecting steel pipesIt’s a lesson we’ve all been taught since we were little: It’s better to be safe than sorry. All through history, industries left and right have learned this lesson the hard way. Infamously, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911 provided a rude awakening that factories needed unrestricted access to fire exits and led to the creation of OSHA. The Pemberton Mill collapse of 1860, one of the worst industrial calamities of American history, spurred stricter building codes. Industrial standards for hazardous material handling rose significantly after a 1947 incident in Texas City set another record for the worst industrial accident in American history.

This is a grim note to start a blog post on, but the good news is this: They learned it the hard way so all of us don’t have to. Today, we know the risks of industrial projects and we know what to do to keep workplaces as risk-free as possible. For instance, high safety standards for industrial pipe help plants across the world do their jobs efficiently and with minimal risks of going down in history for all the wrong reasons.

In your projects, safety hazards are unlikely to be on the same order of magnitude as Triangle Shirtwaist, Texas City, or Pemberton Mill (thankfully), but even small-scale safety hazards are still worth being wary of. In this blog, we’ll explore the costs of safety hazards in your pipe systems, and the role prudent pipe system maintenance can play in avoiding them.

Tallying the Costs of Safety Hazards

In one of our earlier blogs on risk mitigation for heavy metal fabrication work, we took a look at the costs of accidents in the industrial workplace. To recap our findings: The average manufacturing worker misses 67 days of work a year due to workplace injuries, and it’s not just novice workers who are getting injured. Workplace accidents and injuries can happen to anyone, and if they happen on your watch, you could end up facing:

  • Temporary or even permanent loss of valuable manpower or experience on the job site
  • Costs of medical care or damages, if the employer is found liable
  • System downtime, work stoppage, and work slowdowns
  • Budget and timeline overruns
  • Higher employee turnover due to unsafe conditions and lowered morale
  • Difficulty attracting new talent due to a negative reputation for safety
  • Higher training and retraining costs
  • Increased regulatory scrutiny on your operations


For these reasons and more, meeting industrial pipe safety standards should always be a high priority for your workplace. Let’s move on to how you can make it so.

Pipe System Maintenance: A Secret Weapon for Safer Industrial Environments

In our blog on risk mitigation practices in steel fabrication, we took a broad look at best practices for worker safety, from wearing PPE and clearly communicating hazards to managing noise pollution to incorporating ISO 45001 standards into your processes. Many of these best practices are evergreen for industrial workplaces, from steel fabrication to industrial pipeline construction.

Here, though, we’ll dive a little deeper into how proactive pipeline maintenance helps you meet the high safety standards for industrial pipe, starting with the issues pipes have that can cause safety concerns in your workplace.

Safety Issues Caused By Your Pipes—And How Maintenance Can Prevent Them

Safety hazards build up over time. As pipelines do their jobs, the systems slowly undergo wear and tear, even if they are constructed from the strongest and most durable materials. Nothing, after all, lasts forever, not even the best in stainless steel pipe and tube.

Over time, wear, corrosion, scaling, and fouling slowly erode a pipeline’s ability to do its job well—and these forces work faster in high-temperature, high-pressure systems, especially those carrying aggressive or abrasive fluid media. As a pipe system wears down, excessive vibrations can loosen joints and fittings and speed up the decline. As a pipe system wears out, safety hazards become more likely to occur.

Proactive pipe system maintenance catches these issues in pipe and tube, valves, fittings, and supports early, before they can lead to leaks and bursts, which can create tripping and slipping hazards, or blockages, which can cause pressure buildups and harm downstream equipment or personnel. By being proactive, you catch potential issues before they can escalate and take steps to prevent them from occurring.

How to Prevent Leaks, Bursts, and Spills in Your Industrial Pipe Systems

  • Conduct scheduled inspections using visual checks and non-destructive testing techniques to detect early signs of wear or leakage.
  • Monitor especially corrosion-prone areas of your pipe systems more regularly than other areas and apply or reapply anti-corrosion coatings where needed.
  • Follow routine cleaning and flushing schedules to clear away blockages from debris, scale, or biofouling before they start to significantly impede flow.
  • Set up sensors and gauges to continually monitor pressure within your pipe system. These instruments can help you catch pressure anomalies quickly and alert you to potential safety hazards before they stop being “potential.”
  • Regularly inspect hangers, clamps, and other supports to minimize vibration.
  • Check and double-check that your pipe systems are installed according to the manufacturer’s standards.
  • Provide regular training for your maintenance personnel to keep everyone up-to-date.
  • Maintain detailed maintenance logs, including notes on any system modifications, for future reference.

Safety Isn’t Optional—It’s the Smartest Investment You Can Make

Proactive, thorough maintenance minimizes costly downtime and repairs—and the potentially much, much higher costs of safety hazards that can lead to serious workplace injuries.

Your workforce is a valuable resource just like your pipe, valves, and other construction materials—and the cost of workplace injuries, like the costs of damage to valuable equipment, can become very steep, very quickly.

Workplace Safety Begins with the Right PVF Partner

With a keen eye for quality in PVF products and extensive industry experience, American Stainless helps contractors and fabricators across the US Southeast reach high industrial pipe safety standards, even on a small budget—because safety should never be cost-prohibitive. Reach out to us today for a quote on durable, high-performance pipe and tube and make safety your number one priority.