Risk assessment and risk reduction may seem like foreign terms to many in the field of industrial safety. While many environmental, health, and safety (EHS) professionals are charged with the responsibility of providing a safe work environment for the employees of their organization, machine safeguarding becomes just one of the many topics of human safety which must be addressed.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) created the first guidelines for employers in 1971 with the passing of the Occupational Safety and Health Act. These guidelines, which were revolutionary for their time, have since fallen by the way side with the introduction of new manufacturing technologies, best practices, and a changing work force since their initial publication. These standards, particularly those in §1910 Subpart O (Machinery and Machine Guarding), have now become the bare minimum requirements enforceable by law.
Consensus standards, including those presented by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), draw on the expertise and experience of individuals with a direct interest in the topic covered by each publication. Although these standards are intended for voluntary use, they may be applied as mandatory requirements in commerce and industry. Furthermore, these standards are reaffirmed, rewritten, or withdrawn on a continual basis in order to keep up with the changes that occur in industry. These standards, therefore, reflect the time-tested and most commonly used state of the art at the time of their approval.
As these consensus standards are continually updated and as more standards are written to address emerging technologies, the job of the EHS professional becomes more challenging. In order for the safety professional to effectively cover all topics of employee safety, the individual must become acquainted with the relevant laws, applicable standards, and current best practice approaches. For someone responsible for plant-wide safety to become an expert in every field is very difficult, even impractical, to say the least. As a result, these professionals must learn to identify their needs and call on the expertise of individuals and organizations which specialize in those areas.
Once the safety authority learns to identify the needs of their organization, they must then learn how to identify qualified service providers to effectively reach the objective of a safe work environment. When it comes to machine safeguarding, the EHS professional needs to identify contractors who are experienced and well versed in the current requirements which apply to their applications. This includes a thorough understanding of the risk assessment and risk reduction process, as well as a practical approach to the implementation and the additional services necessary to support such a project.
When a safety professional is searching for a service provider capable of performing complete machine safeguarding projects, the professional must first understand the basics of risk assessment and risk reduction in order to obtain and evaluate relevant information received from such vendors. In addition, potential service providers should be able to provide an OSHA 300 Form log upon request to demonstrate their own safety record and understanding of safe work procedures.
