Posted By Alan Murphy Just a query when talking about Permits to work it is obviously a good idea to certainly have it in place, but from an in house point of view whats peoples opinion regarding having a list of approved people as opposed to a permit to work system, for ease and better to work. Basically Is it acceptable practice, and legal to have an approved list of internal employees ie Electricians and Fitters for hot work,or work at height or electrical work or confined spaces etc What is peoples view and experience please, as the approved list would be easier, thanks in advance. Regards Alan

Posted By Alan Murphy I see that point but what if you have given them the appropriate safety training associated with the task and hazards associated with it. I mean are we to expect a electrician to fill permits in all day for his varius jobs.

Posted By Bill Dark I can see your point, but the key aspect of a PTW is to control and co-ordinate actions that ensure the safety of the people carrying out the work, particulalry when more than one group is involved. What you are suggesting may be acceptable if the work was requested by the asset owner and was to be carried out by the asset owners own staff who would need to have total control over the task and plant/equipment and isolations etc. Regards Bill

Posted By James M permits to work are normally issued to control areas of work where even though a risk assessment has been completed and control measures are in place the risk of injury or harm remains high. Examples of this are working with live electrics, confined spaces, maintenance on machinery with moving parts etc I hope this helps Jim

Posted By Merv Newman As previous respondants have said PTW are required when risk of fire, explosion, injury or death is very high and exceptional precautions must be in place before work starts. Just training people is not good enough. "I know what I'm doing" is one' of the biggest killers out there. Back in 1992 our most expert electrician, the one who trained everybody else and who wrote the safety procedures, was electrocuted. Permits should be signed off by a manager AFTER inspection of the work place and ensuring that ALL required procedures and prrecautions are in place. Permits should be signed at the workplace, never in an office. AND, signing the permit does NOT mean "everything will be alright now we are following the written procedure". What it does say is "I share this responsibility with you. If something does go wrong, I will take the blame." sorry about the SHOUTING but I feel very strongly about this. Have a nice day Merv

Posted By Peter Longworth Alan It sounds to me as though you may be looking at PTWs as covering all the work that, for instance an electrician, might do. In that case using PTWs would be needlessly bureaucratic. My view is that PTWs are used to control work that is of a particularly hazardous nature, such as working in sub-stations, hot work etc. All routine tasks should be covered by risk assessment, SSWs etc.

Posted By Ian Waldram A good and thoughtful original question by Alan, so far no one seems to have tackled the issue of how to decide when a Permit is appropriate, and when it is 'over the top'. My experience suggests that a Permit is typically required when any of the following applies: 1) The are hazards for the worker that are beyond his/her direct control, or competence to manage. The Permit summarises these, and confirms what controls have been put in place, e.g. electrical isolation, equipment depressured and drained, etc; 2) The task to be carried out can present significant hazards for others. The Permit identifies additional controls required, e.g. to prevent harm to adjacent workers, to prevent ignition from planned hot work, etc. 3) Is it important to have a record that this task is in progress, e.g. it will continue beyond a shift handover? and 4) The task is not covered by an existing standard operating procedure, carried out by competent persons under appropriate supervision. E.g. driving almost any vehicle would be 'caught' by 1) and 2), but nearly all driving hazards are suitably managed by 'rules of the road' (local or public) and driver competence. An exception would be driving off-road on a site where underground services might be damaged, or live overhead power lines were present. A well-developed shift handover system might cover some aspects of 3), but often a Permit which identifies equipment not available, linked isolations, etc. is the best way to summarise important facts. Thus, for Alan's original question, a competent electrician or fitter working on 'live' equipment which presents hazards only to them, and where no one else is at additional risk if it is isolated temporarily are good examples of work where adding a Permit achieves nothing. On large sites where Permits are widely used, it is not uncommon to find that the system has degenerated to "if in doubt, issue a Permit", the truly hazardous tasks can be obscured in the resulting mountain of paper and completing even a simple task can require numbers of signatures without adding any controls to those the worker planned to have in place anyway! I also recall one site where issuing Permits was said to be necessary to track individuals in case of emergency - quite ignoring the fact that there are ways to do that without generating so much paper, and for much of the time the workers wouldn't be at the Permit location! I've simplified things a little here, partly to provoke hard thinking. But I reckon many operation H&S advisors are far too ready to support the issuing of Permits when they should be ensuring they really add value by specifying additional controls. If they don't, has the Permit become just a backside-covering exercise?

Posted By A. L. Ure Two things - first a response to the orginal posting, and second a minor highjacking of the thread: 1. PtW is a lot more than training or having approved people. Authority, co-ordination and communication are also essential elements. It wasn't a lack of training which kicked-off the chain of events which led to the Piper Alpha disaster, it was a lack of co-ordination and communication of simultaneous work in the PtW system, particularly at shift changeover. Training and competence is one fundamental of the system but not a catch-all. If any activity is in progress involving hot work in a potentially flammable atmosphere, confined space entry, overriding safety systems, or whatever the safety critical jobs are identified as being in that particular operation, a PtW should be used. 2. Now the minor highjack - I'm just in the process of writing an internal PtW Standard for an organisation, and we have been wrestling with how to define the situations or activities where a Permit is required. In the various industry guidance documents I've looked at (this an upstream oil and gas company) there is consistent reference to a PtW being required for 'non-routine work', the implication being that anything that is 'routine' is covered by work instructions and procedures and that a PtW should be used by exception otherwise over-use diminishes it's validity. Whilst I agree with the last part of that, the 'non-routine' part doesn't cut it for me as I reckon there are plenty of 'routine' jobs carried out which are hazardous in nature and require a Permit to control them. It's easy to say 'a Permit shall be used for hot work, confined space entry, excavations etc etc' but I'd like to hear from anyone who has a suggestion as to how I can word a general requirement for when a PtW is warranted? Please note that this is not in the UK so quoting British legislation is of no assistance to me. Alan - apologies for jumping on the back of your thread. My defence is that a) it's relevant and that b) this is one of the more meaningful discussions I've seen on this forum for some time.