Today, our group EH&S manager met with our insurers and at some point the topic turned to hot work.
They tried (I dont know how successfully yet as we have not had a full debrief) to insist that all work involving 18/24v drills and other battery powered tools should have a hot work permit for them. Grinders yes I can understand but drills?
Surely this is a bit overkill and the task should be risk assessed - if you are working for prolonged periods (tools may get hot) near combustibles etc then maybe but to have a blanket insistence - am I missing something?
We are metal bashers so not a vast array of nasty chems, flammables, etc etc.
What are your views please?
Thanks
Stuart

A 3 word question.

Why?

Also you need a sound engineering decision WHY!

This just sounds like incompetent insurance people who have no real competence in Engineering.

Tell them NO. Inform your insurance buyer of this lunacy, instruct your broker to insist on competent advisors, make appropriate decision at renewal time.

Did you by chance get a trainee surveyor or risk assessor from the insurer? I always remember one of my trainees want to issue a requirement for a noise risk assessment for a snooker hall risk - till I told him to go away and think about it.

The insurer will ask for hot work permits to be used to ensure compliance with their burning and welding conditions. Check the policy wording - it will define hot work as welding, bitumen tar boilers, flame cutting, blow lamps, heat guns and possibly grinding operations as well. Also burning of waste material.

Fires arising out of hot works do cost the insurance industry a great deal but to extend the controls to drilling ops is absolutely ridiculous.

As David said, get your broker to question this and if they insist, change provider at renewal time.

A drill is a potential source of ignition (sparks inside the motor and heat generated). If it is being used in a zoned hazardous area (under DSEAR) a hot work permit may be used as a method of control. I believe that would be perfectly reasonable.

stuie - have you defined zoned areas? It could be the case that your insurance company feel you should have, and failure to do so means they think you need to apply a blanket approach.

I agree that requiring a hot work permit for drilling outside of hazardous areas is well over the top.

As others have said try and get the insurers to see reason if not change them. I would not see all welding as needing a hot work permit, let alone rechargeable drills. If welding is part of your production and takes place in a designated area then filling out permits would be a nightmare (you know where I used to work, can you imagine the mess we would have ended up in). 15 people welding at any one time, 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

The insurance company never even suggested it, other daft things yes, but hot works for welding no. Again as noted above there are areas where you may want to have a permit even for the drill (swarf can get hot as well as sparks from the motor). If you metal bash, do you also apply protective treatment? perhaps they only intended this area.

Hi folks - thanks for your input and just to clarify a few points.
No we are not talking DSEAR or zoned areas, we take flat metal sheets and cut and shape them with presses (metal bashing), we have areas where we assemble parts and spot/mig/tig weld them together.
We have a HWP system that we use for any non routine hot work work outside of the toolroom (eg welding on one one of the presses) where we do this sort of thing regularly we have a welding/hot work bay in the toolroom.
I am meeting with the insurers tomorrow so will be able to question/resist etc face to face tomorrow.
Thanks again
Stuart

No mention today !??!?!?!
More interested in Nano Technology - which apparently is going to be the 'new asbestos'. :-(
So that is a result in some respects but I need to dig a bit deeper as to where the 'drilling = HWP' comments came from.
Thanks for your support.
Stuart

As our hot works permit system records fire alarm isolation information, it has been specifically designed to be used for the control of unwanted fire alarm signals (UwFS) too.

Therefore, we issue hot works permits for all drilling, sanding and any task that may produce dust, steam or vapours.

This management system is exclusively in connection with preventing UwFS's (not fire risk) and business disruption, so therefore absolutely nothing to do with our insurance company. I cannot understand why this insurance company would require such an OTT HWP system

If you think of the workshop as the designated area you could actually design a daily permit that actually requires managers and supervisors to go out and check the workshop on a daily, first thing in the morning basis:-) Mind you that might be a shock to their system to actually going round the workshop with only safety in mind