Posted By Neil Thomas I would say the princ contractor

Posted By David Bannister Whomever "owns" or is in control of the premises/plant/site etc which is at risk from uncontrolled hot work should be granting permission for the work to proceed safely. That way there is a vested interest by the issuer of the permit to make sure that it is not just a paper exercise and that proper precautions are both specified and implemented.

Posted By MickN Permits are about ownership and responsibility. Your question seems also to be in two parts. You mention that you are having alot of construction work done. I'm going to assume you already have an operational facitlity at the location and somewhere on site there are parallel construction activities. If it's a completely new building then the principal contractor will separate the construction area from your people (normally a fence of some sort). In this case the PC owns the work and is responsible for everything, including all elements of the permit to work (PTW) system. We assume you have confirmed the competency of the PC. If the PC comes to your building, for example to perform repairs or build an extension then they would need to apply for and abide by your PTW system. In the end either the work is being carried out in your area or an area you've officially handed over responsibility for, i.e. to the PC. Mick

Posted By Jeremy Fripp Agree with Mick, If the work takes place in a defined area which is under the control of the Contractor then it is their responsibility to implement an appropriate permit to work system. It is the clients responsibility to ensure that an adequate system is in place, particularly if an incident (hot work fire) would present an exposure to the clients buildings/operaitons. The client would be advised to audit / inspect the contractors system for effectiveness. If the work is in an area still under the control of the client, then the client's permit to work system should be used. Regards Jeremy

Posted By R. Albright Thanks for all the advice on the Hot work permits. I can now progress the issue that could affect a number of different sites.

Posted By justgossip Good question. Like most companies when it comes to work permits you end up with two lots of paperwork when one would suffice. " paper don't make it safer. If we dress back to the contract phase I think you could get it down to one permit by the sub contractor doing the paper work. i use my self as an example. In trying to get the work we have to show the client that we are competent. This includes showing them our procedures and forms for work permits. In due course the client decides we are competent to do the job and off we go. At this point in practise the client is all over you like a rash telling you how to do a job for which they do not have the skills.They forget that they employed because you can do a good job. It seems to me that having looked and approved our systems why does the client want to add another layer. Why not have the client exercising supervision of my competence. I need to do a task that requires a permit so my permit is raised and used. The client may view my permit and check that i conform to the controls in my permit. We are engaged in ground works for construction. We are experts in this work. All clients require that we complete one of their permits which we do. We then fill out our own permit as our own one is task specific and saves lives. Client permits are worthless but then this is hardly surprising as we are the competent persons. If we act as PC then I expect the subby to have a WP system and I check that they are using it and compliant with it. To my mind this achieves more safety and less paper. So I advocate that only one permit is raised and it is raised by the person who is an expert in the task that the permit covers. garry

Posted By justgossip A valid point covering the inter action. I can see the point of the client issuing Authority for a work permit to commence so that the client can prevent inter action problems. So maybe the subby has the work permit. The client has a form for issuing Authority To Work which is constructed in such a manner as to deal with and prevent inter action problems. or the client could go second signature on my permit with our procedure changed so that client and my sigggy on the WP. Why are things not so straight forward, I try very hard to get rid of documentation that does not achieve real action on the ground. as a subby at the moment for a number of P.C.'s we have to do everything twice and the foreman get cheesed off, instead of supervising they are form filling. The CDM only requires one set of plant equipment inspection doc's on site. don't you just love a friday whine garry