Hi O'Donnell

I am NOT in the market but this is the sort of stuff that I cut my teeth on as a trainee HSE Inspector long time ago. The top man in Aston Uni's health and safety department is on record as having realised that new Inspectors going through a 6 month Diploma often knew more about machinery guarding than those who were lecturing them on the topic!

I think that you might save some money by going direct to a reputable guarding supplier and asking them to draw up a shopping list. OK they might charge you for doing this, but if you then to go out to tender to say 3 potential suppliers, the one who has done the audit is well placed to undercut the opposition.

Somebody like Proctor?

The risk with asking a health and safety consultant to do this is that few these days have the level of industrial experience that those designing and fitting guards do when this is their daily bread.

So, as example, you will have lots of inrunning nips. The H&S consultant will probably say fit a fixed guard which might be an angle immediately in front of the nip or might be a fixed or interlocked tunnel guard. The guarding manufacturer should know which is the better option for your application and specify the parameters for what is to be supplied. I would have to look up what the relevant BS EN standard says about the dimensions, whereas the guarding supplier will have those built into their Computer Aided Design software.

If you were to get in a guard supplier to do the specimen design (and thence contract specification) they may try to overegg the pudding but then will lose the bigger contract as others will point to cheaper yet effective solutions, which means that there is no incentive to overegg the pudding (as long as they know that at best they will be the preferred tenderer for the expensive work, assuming that you provide for tenderers to include for alternatives to the outline specification).

Now I am going to duck all the outrage from H&S consultants!!

Good luck, Peter

I'm sort of with Peter on this.  Some H&S Consultants MAY have the right skills for this work but actually this is more suited to machinery engineers as they can advise on the actual guard rather than that guarding is required (if that makes sense).

There are a number of engineering businesses out there who do machinery and guarding assessments who, in my experience are far more competent to complete this kind of work.

In the interim, the best piece of advice I have ever been given (by a machinery engineer) about how to assess where you have areas that need a guard is to use the 'rule of spoon'.  Imagine holding a standard 6" wooden spoon by the bulb end.  If to can identify points in machinery that would trap or crush the handle end of the spoon then it needs a guard of some kind.  As Peter says, then engineers or guarding designers are best placed to identify the most appropriate guard for the duty.

Ian, I would agree with you that a first pass might be prudent if this company was much larger.

But it's an SME with about 100 workers (not all of whom will be working on dangerous machinery).

So, what O'Donnell needs is a specification for perhaps no more than 30 machines that need improvement - I assume that some would "pass" an audit as I have NEVER been a factory where every single machine needs attention.

P

Edited by user 04 March 2022 11:05:18(UTC)  | Reason: A few words to clarify

Originally Posted by: Holliday42333

Imagine holding a standard 6" wooden spoon by the bulb end to identify points in machinery that would trap or crush the handle end of the spoon then it needs a guard of some kind.

What is a 6" spoon - overall length (4" handle plus 2" bowl) or a 6" handle plus bowl?

Pretty sure for the actual standards a 6" wooden handle spoon @ 1/2" in diameter would fail to be sufficient - you have to account for the variety in the potential workforce and not just the average european adult male.

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Originally Posted by: Holliday42333

Imagine holding a standard 6" wooden spoon by the bulb end to identify points in machinery that would trap or crush the handle end of the spoon then it needs a guard of some kind.

What is a 6" spoon - overall length (4" handle plus 2" bowl) or a 6" handle plus bowl?

Pretty sure for the actual standards a 6" wooden handle spoon @ 1/2" in diameter would fail to be sufficient - you have to account for the variety in the potential workforce and not just the average european adult male.

6" overall length.  You are absolutely right that this rule of thumb (or spoon) may not be anthropometrically accurate for the workforce or meet the mm specific engineering standards.

However its a good pareto method for a first pass to see how much of a problem there is.  Are there a few relatively simple nip/crush points that could be dealt with by a guarding supplier (such as Proctor) or more of a larger/complex problem that would best be served by engaging a more specialist engineering practice (such as Conformance)?

It is also a very effective way to explain to the holders of the purse strings why their expensive machinery that was a great deal from Europe, the far east or even the UK now needs a whole heap more money spending on it for guarding.  In my experience, quoting from ISO standards doesn't help with this visualisation and buy in.

Edited by user 04 March 2022 13:09:07(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Normally between un-packing and service conection is a great opportunity to walk around the new toy with its proud owner (they invariably show up at delivery and lose interest during comissioning) asking them to place their hands in the various available openings with "now imagine if this were powered up and running".

If it has been correctly purchased guarding would have been adressed throughout design & build with confirmation at the pre-shipment inspection, sadly that is not where the OP finds themself.

Back to the wooden spoon - power off - last thing you need is a timber projectile ejected from the machine

OK, you win.  I'll stop using a 20+ year sucessful visualisation (no actual spoons are ever used) tool to engage stakeholders at first pass.

I'll instead start slapping down the [insert large number] page BS(EN) standard on their desk and telling them to read it in detail if they want to understand why specialist help is required.

I can't help but wonder if the specialist consultants required will get more or less work with this approach.

I've been using not the same but a similar visualisation for 40 years as that "first pass".

When I joined HSE the tables in BS5304 had recently been updated.

Might be an urban myth but I was told that they had found that the previous tables had been largely based on anthropometrics for white males and didn't work when it came to women with long, slim fingers, and the example was given of Asian women in textiles factories in Leicester.

I don't think I have ever set foot in Leicester, but by coincidence it's near IOSH HQ [which I have visited].