MACHINE SAFETY AUDITS

Why is machinery safety important?

Moving machinery can cause injuries in many ways:

  • People can be struck and injured by moving parts of machinery or ejected material. Parts of the body can also be drawn in or trapped between rollers, belts and pulley drives
  • Sharp edges can cause cuts and severing injuries, sharp-pointed parts can cause stabbing or puncture the skin, and rough surface parts can cause friction or abrasion
  • People can be crushed, both between parts moving together or towards a fixed part of the machine, wall or other object, and two parts moving past one another can cause shearing
  • Parts of the machine, materials and emissions (such as steam or water) can be hot or cold enough to cause burns or scalds
  • Injuries can also occur due to machinery becoming unreliable and developing faults or when machines are used improperly through inexperience or lack of training

Other risks may arise from:

  • electrical, hydraulic or pneumatic power supplies
  • badly designed safeguards. These may be inconvenient to use or easily overridden, which could encourage your workers to risk injury. (see photo example below)

Before you start using any machine you should think about what risks may occur and how these can be managed.

Often, companies only need help to know what to do and how to provide proper machine guarding. It is often overwhelming to consider the obligations, requirements, and options that are present. Our on-site safety audits evaluate the existing machine safety, make recommendations, and provide guidance on risk reduction methods (guards, interlocks, signs, training, etc.).

We provide a safety consulting and engineering service where our Machine Safety Audit includes the following:

  • On-site inspections, and consulting
  • Identification of machine, name, manufacturer, classification (machine type)
  • Observation of machine operations
  • Notes, photos, videos of the machine in operation (when feasible).
  • Gap analysis of observed hazards as related to current regulations and applicable EN standards
  • Safeguarding (hazard abatement) recommendations and conclusions
  • Report generation and compilation
2020-Machine-Safety-Audit-1-cropped

Example of a wood cutting machine with several trap/draw points and possible contact with moving parts. Some simple fixed guarding would dramatically improve the machines safety

2020-Machine-Safety-Audit-2-cropped

Example of an operators attempt at circumvention. This safety solution could be improved with the inclusion of a safety monitoring sensor

We are here to work with you and your machine safety concerns.