Safety evo
Life saving tips
It is a crucial requirement to prevent being pinned between equipment inside your working site. Because nobody will like to face the catastrophic results of this type of hazards.
Being caught in or between is very likely to occur to many workers performing many different activities.
For example, in construction sites, while dealing with mechanical rotating equipment, inside the confined spaces, being engulfed in an excavation, due to soil collapses and many other forms of activities.
We will not waste time, all previously mentioned examples will be covered with separate posts.
Now it is time to learn some effective controls that will help you to prevent being pinned between equipment .
Our control measures will deal with different productivity elements.
We will talk about the human factor, the equipment and the surrounding environment.
As each one of them can separately pose you and your team to this deadly hazard.
How to prevent being pinned between equipment
HUMAN FACOTRS – EQUIPMENT FACTORS – ENVIRONMENT.
Human factors
Competency:
When we speak about competent workers, we mean by this to ensure that our workers have enough skills, education, experience and personal attitude to perform their work.
A competent worker knows exactly how to avoid being in front of the line of fire.
A competent worker is more likely to perform his job in a safe way as he knows exactly the consequences of being pinned between equipment.
He know how to use his tools and equipment, how to properly estimate the surrounding hazards and how to avoid doing overconfident risky practices.
Fitness to work:
Fitness to work Is another important human factor. We need to make sure that the workers are fit to work physically and mentally and are suffering no problems that can affect their performance.
Awareness:
It may be different from educated or experienced, as the awareness level will vary from an activity to another depending on many factors.
We need to provide them with the proper tools to make sure that they are fully aware about their activity.
Toolbox talk is one of these powerful tools, by which the supervisor can share with his crew some important issues like the risk assessment or job procedures.
Inside this TBT, we may share some experience about incidents that happened in similar activities where people were pinned between equipment to learn from previous experiences.
Supervision:
Which is essential even if we are sure that our team is competent enough to do the job.
Especially the safety supervision, because the safety officer will use his complete focus to these issues related to the workers safety only.
Leadership visits also can play a major role in improving workers performance as these visits shows them the management commitment towards their safety.
Many other human factors can provide a great help to prevent being pinned between equipment. Those were just samples.
Equipment factors
The next crucial factor that can help to prevent being pinned between equipment is the equipment itself.
Days ago, we covered an awful accident in which someone his two arms. This accident was a real one, check it to feel the seriousness of this issue.
When we talk about the mechanical equipment safety we need to focus on:
- The machine guarding, which can prevent the workers from being in direct contact with the moving parts.
This guard need to be designed properly to withstand any accidental contact.
- Emergency stop option is very important. It will make it easy for workers to immediately stop the equipment in hazardous situations.
- Inspection and maintenance: Strictly follow the preventive maintenance plan and perform the periodic inspections.
This will early discover any unusual performance for your machine and ensures its safe operation all the time.
Also, it is essential to monitor the equipment during the normal operation,
so that you can detect any unusual operation which might be an alarm notifying you that there is something about to happen.
- Never use your equipment above its capability.
- Never use your equipment above its capability. Every equipment has to be operated according to its proper capacity.
- Safety critical elements for the equipment are mandatory and cannot be removed. These SCEs are responsible for the safety of the equipment and the operators.
If it is essential to override any safety critical element, make sure that you provided the proper adequate alternative control and try to put it back in service ASAP.
The surrounding Environment
Also the working site and adjacent activities can play a significant role to prevent being pinned between equipment.
- So, always make sure that the working site is clear enough to perform your activity, either routine or non-routine activities (like maintenance).
- Any simultaneous on concurrent activity has to be properly considered and controlled.
- Someone who is familiar with the working site has to supervise your activity in order to notify the job performers about any site related issues they don’t know about.
- Proper housekeeping before, during and after performing your activity can prevent many life threatening situations.
The previous tips were just some examples on how to protect against caught in or between hazards from our limited experience.
We need to be aware that controls are applied to prevent the unwanted events and prevent the hazards from harming us.
Your safety is everything, so stay alert and keep your eyes on what’s most important.
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