Posted By Merv Newman So as not to interfere with the office safety thread (which is getting nicely chatty) I thought I would post my ideas on the necessity or not of a work permit. Apart from the usual risk assessment and authorisations, I would reserve "permits" for life threatening or business threatening situations - "Hot work" permit for welding, grinding, cutting, "High work" for anything over the current regulatory work, "excavation" for digging up the lawn or the carpark, "penetration" for confined space entry etc. And saying "permit" is short hand for "Application of the relevant permit system". One of my plant managers said "If I ever find a safety permit that was signed in an office instead of on-site, you're fired. An office hot-laminating machine needs a HOT sign and staff training. It does not require a "hot work" permit. It's Monday and I'm feeling a bit pedantic. Sorry.

Posted By Adrian Watson Merv, I've always considered permits to work as a top tier admin control, along with method statements & as such reserved for situations which would cause death if done in the wrong sequence or manner and require a coordinated approach; Below permits in the next tier are authorisations; Then there are safe working procedures; and Finally, the competent man, or the supervised trainee. Regards Adrian Watson

Posted By peter gotch Merv, Agreed 100%. Overuse of permits is liable to (and often does) result in insufficient attention in the circumstances when they are really needed, as they become just a day to day mundane exercise. I recall one project at sewage treatment works where the site agent was writing out about 50 badly drafted permits per day. In the more deep and distant past when I worked for HSE, I arrived at a major factory, 24 hour operation, occupied by household name at lunchtime to be informed by security that all visitors were subject to permit requirements. Unfortunately the only person authorised to issue this was out to lunch. Security were adamant that my warrant was not going to get round the PTW requirement. You can imagine the embarrassment of the shift manager when he got back from lunch! From his perspective the afternoon got worse when we went into a machine shop and I suggested that we went up onto the elevated gantries. "Never been up here before." "No, but your maintenance engineers, crane examiners etc are frequently up here". Walked to end of bay to find 16m unprotected drop. Overhead crane driver helpfully pointed out that usually the crane would provide protection. "But it doesn't at the moment, does it". Some months later, call from said manager to advise that he had changed job and had found more H&S problems than he had anticipated. Could I visit and discuss his proposed action plan. pm that day went into machine shop and suggested that we went up onto elevated gantry......Overhead crane driver helpfully....Embarrassed Manager "Don't go there!!" Regards, Peter