While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would have all businesses perform routine health and safety inspections…
… not every employer is required to. Businesses which have employees perform more dangerous job functions or work with hazardous machinery or materials may be required to comply with more strict regulations and perform regular inspections in order to ensure that a safe environment is provided to workers. Regardless of whether a business receives a mandate from OSHA to perform routine inspections, employers can be held liable if OSHA believes they have failed to take measures that are considered reasonable to reduce the chances of injury.
It is a proven fact that routine safety inspections can save lives and employers need to be more willing to actively participate in programs that will reduce workplace accidents.
Equipment Requiring Regular Inspection
Regular safety inspections can identify problems with machinery well before they become a hazard to workers, but employers often push back against mandated inspection schedules in order to avoid costs associated with regular maintenance and repair. It is a sad affair when the safety of employees is not valued more than the costs required to ensure that every employee makes it home from his or her shift. OSHA requires facilities and worksites that maintain or operate certain forms of machinery to perform regular inspections and make repairs to machinery when appropriate because, when left to the employers’ discretion, these inspections may not be performed.
The equipment which is subject to regular inspection includes the following.
- Cranes and Derricks. These machines pose a risk not only to those who operate them on a routine basis, but to the public as well. Should a crane malfunction or collapse, the results can be catastrophic.
- Power presses and forging equipment. It is important to ensure that this equipment is working properly in order to protect the workers that regularly place their bodies at risk by operating it.
- Welding, cutting and brazing equipment. This can include electric saws, welding safety equipment, torches, drills and more.
- Commercial vehicles. Many commercial trucks fail to receive the maintenance they need and the mechanical failures that result cause devastating and catastrophic injuries to others on the roads.
- Fire and chemical extinguishers. Ensuring that workers are able to protect themselves in the event of a fire can save many lives, especially if a working extinguisher can neutralize the threat before it spreads out of control. Conversely, workers who attempt to extinguish a chemical or electrical fire with a defective extinguisher can meet dire consequences.
- Powered platforms and lifts. It is important to ensure that lifts are being used properly and can support the weight they are designed to bear. Should a platform or lift fail while elevated, it can result in serious injuries or fatalities.
- Any equipment that has been modified from its original manufactured design. Altering the manner in which a piece of equipment can help workers accomplish their tasks more efficiently, but it is important to ensure that the modifications so not increase the risk of mechanical failures that can harm the operators.
How will you be able to monitor all these while also making sure you wouldn’t miss anything that could put a worker’s safety on the line? You need to properly and constantly enforce completion of inspection and safety checklists.
URDesigns assists many customers who operate the types of equipment that require Safety Inspections and who also do not have an “Iron Clad” way to inspect, save, and retrieve inspections.
URDesigns help companies go…
From…
Misplaced, lost, or incomplete paper inspectionsTo…
Fully completed, retrievable inspections
With these types of inspections:
- Configurable Digital Safety Inspection
- Configurable Digital Operational Inspection
- Configurable Digital Daily Inspection
- Configurable Digital “Safe to Work” Inspection
- Configurable Digital Quality Control Inspections
This 2020, make the safety of every team member of your business organization a priority. Let’s leave the lack of enforcing safety protocols and conduction of proper safety inspections behind in the last decade. You can easily achieve this by putting all these inspections and lists in one place that can easily be accessed and saved. Make sure the lists will be impossible to ignore or forget.
If you want to talk more about this, you can set up an appointment with us here.
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