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I was wondering if anyone has had any experience of the interaction between PUWER and the use of historic machinery (and in particular, the HSE inspectors' view on the application of Reg 11) The only relevant thread I can find is here: https://forum.iosh.co.uk...f-Vintage-farm-machinery
and I am not sure I agree with the last comment on it. Putting modern guards on period equipment in a museum setting might not be reasonable, but it seemingly would be practicable, and PUWER reg. 11 pointedly omits the 'reasonable' requirement. My concerns are around the use of manually powered printing presses, in a period setting in which it would absolutely not be appropriate to add modern guarding or braking systems.
They are only used by skilled, experienced members of staff and I am content that this is sufficient control, but I am concerned over whether stopping at the bottom of the heirarchy (information, instruction, training and supervision) would be seen to be enough.
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I would draw comparison with every other "museum" style setting where the equipment of the past is in operation to educate the public e.g. original hand weaving looms etc.
In some the public are within touching distance whilst at others a distance based approach with rails and barriers is adopted. Those demonstrating being skilled in use and operation of the equipment. I can only think of one example of an insistence of retro-guarding which is for the door mechanisms on the heritage carriages of the "Hogwarts Express" but that is for protection of the public passengers and not the railway staff.
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I would draw comparison with every other "museum" style setting where the equipment of the past is in operation to educate the public e.g. original hand weaving looms etc.
In some the public are within touching distance whilst at others a distance based approach with rails and barriers is adopted. Those demonstrating being skilled in use and operation of the equipment. I can only think of one example of an insistence of retro-guarding which is for the door mechanisms on the heritage carriages of the "Hogwarts Express" but that is for protection of the public passengers and not the railway staff.
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Isn't part of the education about such equipment conveying that this stuff was indeed dangerous and did cause injuries, and would not be acceptable in production today?
In that case might there be a way to add a safety feature to it while including in the information conveyed to visitors that this isn't an original safety feature and it has been added precisely because we care more nowadays about the safety of workers?
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PUWER regulation 11 states that the aim of guarding is to “prevent access to any dangerous part of machinery or to any rotating stock-bar…” . Please note it refers to “machinery” not “work equipment”. Machinery has an external power source, which means if human bits come into contact with dangerous machinery, they are likely to be chewed up but other work equipment which is human powered can simply be stopped. In the case of the manually operated printing press, the control is before turning the lever or crank the operating checks that no fleshy bits are at risk. So you do not need to put guards on a manually operated printing press. Some sort of barrier to keep the public will be useful but based on my experience of livings histories the main reason for those barriers is stop the public pinching stuff from the display such as your collection of rare old moveable type.
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AK - on a side issue from the main thread, the case law says that dangerous machinery does NOT have to be mechanically powered. Richard Thomas & Baldwins Ltd v Cummings [1955] A.C. 321 (Redgrave 1976 was very good to me this morning. Second case in pages and pages of case law on Sections 12-16 of the Factories Act 1961!!) ...which explains why one of the first Guidance Notes thay HSE published was on hand and foot operated presses and how to guard these. In the deep and distant past I operated hand presses - I would NOT have wanted my hand between the tools when the top one was coming down.
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Right, now I am confused because I thought the definition of machinery was something that had moving parts powered by some non-human power source, be that electricity or steam or whatever. I do appreciate that hand operated equipment can also be dangerous, but what definition of machinery is relevant to this particular provision of PUWER?
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Elfin Can you not fit a perspex guard which would enable people to clearly see what happens but protects the operator. Tbe guard just needs to stop tbe operator coming into contact with the moving part so whilst not nessacerily following strict guidelines it still protects the operator. Tbe visitors will also see the dangers. Might need a little bit of thinking about. I have done this with a few pieces of old machinery.
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Hi Kate I found the guidance that HSE published to replace the Guidance Note, which I think was PM3.
PM stood for Plant and Machinery - to contrast with GS (General Series), EH (Environmantal Hygiene) and MS (Medical Series). The very first HSE Guidance Note would have been circa 1976, so that gives you an idea of how long HSE has worried about presses which don't have external power supplies. So PM3 replaced by..... EIS30 - Safety in the use of hand and foot operated presses (hse.gov.uk) Clear reference to Reg 11 of PUWER being relevant. Back to the main thread..... I think most HSE Inspectors could be expected to take a pragmatic view about heritage equipment being used in museum like settings, and might stray a bit from full application of the hierarchy of control measures.
Not least since, some years before the Hogwarts Express scenario that Roundtuit alludes to, HSE got its fingers burnt when it lost an appeal against an Improvement Notice requiring automatic slam doors on all heritage railway carriages. The appellants successfully convinced the Tribunal that the accident history on heritage trains was so low that it was NOT reasonably practicable to retrofit automatic closing on train doors. What was different with the Hogwarts Express some years later was a history of accidents on this particular set of carriages.
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Thanks Peter, that guidance document does indeed say in black and white that the dangerous parts of hand and foot operated presses are dangerous parts of machinery and that PUWER reg 11 applies to them. And I can see why they would want to say that.
But I'm still at a loss as to what definition of machinery is being used!
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Watching TV last night sparked a thought - disguised guards. The owner of an early commercial truck had upgraded their dynamo to a modern alternator.
So people could not see an abomintaion of new technology under the bonnet they fabricated a cover which looked like a period tool-box including a mock leather fixing strap.
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Watching TV last night sparked a thought - disguised guards. The owner of an early commercial truck had upgraded their dynamo to a modern alternator.
So people could not see an abomintaion of new technology under the bonnet they fabricated a cover which looked like a period tool-box including a mock leather fixing strap.
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Richard Thomas & Baldwins Ltd v Cummings [1955] A.C. 321 Fascinating old case…of course the court got it wrong! Basically a repair was being carried out on a piece of machinery. The machine was depowered and one of the people fixing the machine operated the machine by pulling a drive belt which caused the accident. The court dismissed negligence claim out of hand, which a modern court would not have done, especially as there was no “ “suitable or sufficient risk assessment”, ‘cos that had not been invented yet. The court instead used a breach of the statutory duties under the Factories Act, in particular the requirement under sections 12 to 16 which detail what parts of machinery need guarding, including the “transmission”. It was decided that the whole machinery was machinery whether or not it was connected to its “prime mover”. So the case was found for the plaintiff. It looks like the court was on the side of the plaintiff and twisted the meaning of the Act to enable them to win. In some ways it was a fair decision as the plaintiff got their compensation but the how the court get their has left us with a problem- as Kate what is person powered machine? And what needs guarding on it. I strongly suspect that when PUWER was being drafted nobody thought that it could apply to a simple hand operated piece of machinery-does an egg whisk require guards. It’s elf and safety gone mad I say…
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That depends on the type of whisk - fork, balloon, push operated, hand cranked, electric.
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That depends on the type of whisk - fork, balloon, push operated, hand cranked, electric.
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Thank you all for the replies - I'm glad to see from this discussion that I'm not the only one approaching this with furrowed brow! I though AK had it with the definition of machinery - which doesn't appear in PUWER but the Supply of Machinery regs do exclude human-powered equipment. But that engineering publication really has thrown a spanner in the works. Peter, my experience with the local office has not filled me with confidence around their pragmatism - hence becoming annoyingly preoccupied with compliance by semantics rather than just keeping people safe!
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Originally Posted by: Roundtuit Watching TV last night sparked a thought - disguised guards. The owner of an early commercial truck had upgraded their dynamo to a modern alternator.
So people could not see an abomintaion of new technology under the bonnet they fabricated a cover which looked like a period tool-box including a mock leather fixing strap.
Yes it's a good idea, I don't think it's the answer in this particular case but we are looking at this type of thing for some of our newer developments
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Kate et al My Concise Oxford English Dictionary (so not the actual OED that Judges are supposed to default to when interpreting words that are not defined in legislation) defines "machine" amongst other things as any device that transmits a force or directs its application Now many hand operated machines fall within that definition - manual labour is used to create stored energy, e.g. to raise "La Guillotine" to let it fall down on the victim's neck. ....or an old fashioned sewing machine that was entirely operated by human force, and even includes the word "machine" in the title. Noting what AK says about the case law, perhaps the Judges got round any grey areas in defining a "machine" by instead interpreting what a "dangerous part of machinery" was - the guidance on PUWER comments: 141 The term ‘dangerous part’ has been established in health and safety law through judicial decisions. In practice, this means that if a piece of work equipment could cause injury, while being used in a foreseeable way, it can be considered a dangerous part
...and thence the Judges interpreted the words to be consistent with the aims of the legislation - to protect people from injury. The problem with PUWER is that it sets a hiearchy of control measures that doesn't easily translate to the use of heritage equipment for the purposes of entertainment and education, perhaps in part as PUWER was a replacement for legislation which in many sectors set an even tougher bar than a mix of what is "practicable" and what is "reasonably practicable". P
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I think you've hit it with the sewing machine - I remember these being powered using a treadle, and yes, they were still invariably called sewing machines.
Not sure it would be practicable to guard the guillotine such that it can fulfil its function.
Of course what is a machine for the purpose of one piece of legislation need not be for the purpose of another.
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Britannica is more encompasing: machine, device, having a unique purpose, that augments or replaces human or animal effort for the accomplishment of physical tasks.
At this level ramps, pulleys and levers become machines.
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Britannica is more encompasing: machine, device, having a unique purpose, that augments or replaces human or animal effort for the accomplishment of physical tasks.
At this level ramps, pulleys and levers become machines.
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Hi Elfin "Peter, my experience with the local office has not filled me with confidence around their pragmatism - hence becoming annoyingly preoccupied with compliance by semantics rather than just keeping people safe!"
It does of course depend on the local Inspector (and to be honest I think that the overall quality of Inspectors has deteriorated as a result of cuts to HSE budgets etc), but my guess is that MOST will probably be a bit cautious about being over gungho when it comes to vintage machinery in the sort of setting you describe. My instinct is that Inspectors are more likely to lose the plot when they have clear guidance from their employer and then choose to apply that guidance without thinking about the circumstances that they see in front of them. Hence, recent blitz campaigns with lots of enforcement notices requiring e.g. RPE for exposure to fumes from welding or dust from woodworking machinery apparently with no attempt by the Inspector to collect evidence as to the ACTUAL reasonably estimable levels of exposure for what might be very intermittent operations.
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