safety

Answer

• Standard Operating Procedure for Workers Working With Energized Equipment

  OSHA Purpose:                                                                  

                Under the Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration was enacted in the department of labor to;

  • Encourage workers and employers to minimize workplace hazard and to improve the existing health and safety programs.
  • Provide for research in occupational health and safety to design innovative ways of addressing occupational health and safety challenges.
  • Create distinct but dependent rights and responsibilities for workers and employers for the attainment of better health and safety conditions.
  • Maintain a record keeping and reporting system to check over job related illness and injuries.
  • Organize a training programs to enhance the competence and number of occupational safety and health personnel.
  • Design compulsory job health and safety standards and enact them successfully and offer for the development, assessment, evaluation and approval of state health programs and occupational safety.

  Although OSHA repeatedly assess and redefines specific practices and standards, its core purpose remains the same. It seeks to enact its mandate comprehensively and strongly without any impartiality to all the concerned individuals. In all its procedures, starting from development through adoption and enactment, OSHA assures workers and employees the right to have full information, actively take part and appeal to actions (Smith, Karsh, Carayon, & Conway, 2003).

  The following are standard operating procedures for our employees who will be working with energized equipment.

  • Only qualified workers are authorized to work on or with exposed energized lines or rather parts of the equipment. This will reduce the cases of accidents and deaths that are likely to occur due to ignorance or lack of necessary skills and knowledge regarding the equipment.
  • Only qualified workers will be authorized to work in areas that contain uninsulated and unguarded energized lines or parts of devices that operate at least 50V.
  • All employees will be required to treat electric equipment and lines as energized unless they have been dienergized in line with the OSHA standards.
  • The employer will ensure that no worker approaches or comes near any conductive object nearer exposed energized parts than the minimum approach distance set by the employer unless the worker is insulated from the energized part.

  Working Position

  Regarding the working from below, the employee must make sure that each worker to the degree that other safety related conditions within the workplace allow, works in a position from which a shock or a slip will not make the body of the employee to come into contact with exposed, uninsulated parts energized ().

  When an employee is working near exposed parts energized at over 600V and is not putting on rubber insulating gloves, the worker will work from a position where she or he cannot come near the least approach distance established by the employer.

  Making Connections

  • The employer must ensure that when workers are connecting dienergized equipment or lines to an energized circuit using a conducting wire, the worker must first fix the wire to the dienergized part. Secondly, when disconnecting lines or equipment from an energized circuit using a conducting wire, the worker must first remove the source end before anything else.
  • When equipment or lines are disconnected or connected from energized circuits, the worker will be required to keep lose conductors far from exposed energized parts.

  Protection from Electric Arcs and Flames

        The employer is required to review the workplace to establish various workers who are exposed to electric arcs or flames. Secondly, for each worker exposed to hazards from flames or electric arcs, the employer will be required to make a logical estimate of the incident heat energy to which the worker would be exposed (Reese, & Eidson, 1999).