Safe working arrangements

Wherever there is risk to personnel or a potential for a major accident on hazardous plant, safe working arrangements are necessary. These require conscientious, diligent people working through procedures, which are designed to minimize risk, either to the individual doing a job or to the plant itself. 

First, the initial fire and explosion was caused by a failure of the permit to work arrangements (see Safe Working Arrangements in Chapter 10). 

In addition to the need to provide a safe work environment, and provide adequate launch and recover facilities, the diving contractor must ensure that adequate arrangements exist for the emergency recompression of divers. 

The act or process of laying out, or planning in detail, to show the arrangement of equipment and other elements of a facility to establish a safe working environment. Factor of Safety (FS)... 

Generally taken as the maximum load that an item of equipment (e.g., crane) may raise, lower, or suspend under particular service conditions and arrangements. Each individual type of equipment has its own specific safe working load limits. 

Safe systems of work are fundamental to accident prevention and should (a) fully document the hazards, precautions and safe working methods, (b) include job training, and (c) be referred to in the Arrangements section (part 3) of the Safety Policy. 

Management needs to provide resources to furnish a safe working environment, to allow systems of control to be identified and review, and equipment installed and maintained. Prevention of incidents requires company employees to know the nature and hazardous properties of the materials so that suitable precautionary arrangements can be made for their safe storage, handling and use. Employees need to comply with company policy, procedures and help identify areas of concern and unsafe practices. 

Obtain details of the arrangements made to control safe working conditions for subcontractors ... 

Where safe access and egress cannot be maintained because of the nature of the work, make adequate arrangements for fall prevention by design, or fall protection by the provision of safe working platforms, safety nets, fall arrest equipment and safety harnesses. 

The role of management is to define a safe work method prior to the commencement of work, and to arrange for provision of suitable access equipment and trained personnel as required by the safe system devised. 

We must not forget the client. The client review is an excellent tool that can be used to get the client s first impression of safety performance. This has been shown to be especially effective when conducted on a formal basis after a phase of the project, or the entire project, has been completed. The PM and the SM should arrange to meet the client represen-tative(s) in a face-to-face meeting to discuss safety performance and possibly other parameters of the recently completed job, or phase of job. The information obtained from the review is immediately analyzed. Once analyzed, it can be used to prevent recurrences of identified problems, to publicize good practices and innovative approaches to problem solving, and to perform work more safely and efficiently. 

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