Safety

In the past few years, Hydrovacs and “daylighting” have gained industry acceptance by minimizing the challenges of exposing underground pipelines, fiber-optics, and utilities. “Daylighting” is a non-destructive process using pressurized water (hydro) and a vacuum system (vac) to remove soil cover, thereby allowing a visual observation of underground lines. Hydrovacs expose these facilities to daylight, thus the term “daylighting”.

Most efforts to decrease the frequency and severity of injuries to miners have stressed miner training and work procedures, improved work environments and safety and environmental control equipment, improved personal protective equipment, improved equipment control and display design, enhanced lighting and visibility-related research, and organizational issues. However, the industry has paid much less attention to the design of the mining machine itself with respect to maintenance cost or safety for the maintainer.

The force acting on a general purpose relay is near the fulcrum of the arm. With a force guided relay, the force acting on the relay is about as close to the contact point as one can reasonably get.

Trelleborg has developed a product, that can withstand a jet fire – the cause of the Piper Alpha disaster. The product is already in use on several platforms, primarily in the North Sea. To date, some NOK 7 million in development costs- has been invested annually. These costs are shared by the project sponsors, comprising the Norwegian government and a number of oil companies. Continued development is not expected to be as costly and will focus more on handling other derivatives, such as gas and oil, and possibly being able to offer a material in other colors for customers who wish to customize their equipment using their own color schemes.

A chaotic or traumatic event can happen to anyone at any time or place. Would you be ready if it happened to you? Anything that threatens your sense of safety and security either physically or mentally can be considered a traumatic event. How well you respond to and recover from such events primarily depends on your overall state of well-being. Let’s look at ways to develop the Internal Resources and External Resources you need to put yourself in the best possible position to deal with chaotic events.

Certified mail has arrived. The letter carrier isn’t Ed McMahon. Uh Oh! It’s a citation package from the USDOL/OSHA. What do you do? You glance at the paperwork to be sure it really relates to an OSHA inspection at one of your sites. You notice some rather heavy penalties. You are shocked, irate and feel as if you’ve been branded “corporate slime.” You try to convince yourself that you’ve been in lots of workplaces that are more dangerous than yours. You need this like a centipede needs sore feet. Options pop through you mind.

We as safety professionals aren’t exempt. Have you seen this: Workers don’t change their actions? Tell them again (with a why-didn’t-you-listen undertone). Policies and procedures not followed? Write additional (and more detailed) rules. Training didn’t change their behavior? Put them through the same training again and again (until they “get it”). Try, try, try again to solve safety problems, but don’t confuse persistence with obstinancy.

ISO 12100 is a fundamental safety standard being developed that will apply to a very broad array of machinery.  There are many machines that have specific industry consensus standards that pertain to the particular equipment (e.g., power presses, robots, packaging machinery).  There are many more machines for which no industry specific standard exists.  In this case, the ISO “A level” standard ISO 12100 Safety of Machinery applies.  Complying with the requirements of ISO 12100 is a critical first step in achieving mobility of equipment and consistent operations.

“Prevention is better than cure”, this proverb sounds rightly in case of maintenance also. If the maintenance is prevented, then the availability of the plant increases and the overall cost reduces. Every effort should be made to avoid maintenance, which can be achieved through continuous monitoring of equipment and upgrading the sophistication of the equipment through better design and process improvement.