A New Look At Guarding Issues

A broad cross section of industry participants recently came together to discuss the key issues around guarding of fixed plant. CMPA Executive Director ROGER BUCKLEY reports on the outcomes of the workshop.

ALMOST 50 people from CMPA member and non member companies, government, unions and equipment suppliers attended the Guarding Workshop held at Tullamarine on Thursday 8th October. The Workshop aimed to outline the obligations of operator, raise the knowledge of industry participants on the issues around guarding and to develop industry agreed best practices. This material will help to enhance CMPA OH&S support sheets as well as provide input into WorkSafe guidance material.

The workshop was facilitated by Sarah Andrew and started with an educational presentation by Mick Cayless from WorkSafe. He provided an overview of the legislative and regulatory obligations of operators, illustrated with some excellent examples of compliant and non compliant guarding.

This was followed by group discussions looking at guarding issues around specific examples at the conveyor tail drum head drum, conveyor body, jaw crusher and primary feeder, other crushers including cone and impactor and screen and mixing stations.

Discussion was then held on the benefits and issues of various attachment methods used to secure guards. The pros and cons of nuts and bolts, special head bolts, interlocked mesh guard, welding, cable ties, padlocks, clips and wedges were all discussed and documented.

Teams then worked together to develop a Job Safety Analysis ( JSA) on a specific issue. Th e Workshop finished with a short word from the sponsor of the day, Hitachi.

COMMON THEMES

The Workshop identified the following aspects as relevant to all guarding situations and should be considered for each fixed plant situation. For all of the following aspects, details of design and materials should follow Australian Standards and relevant OHS regulations. This includes interlocking guards and removal of guards by a tool.

• Mesh guards should limit access to nip points.
• Size of mesh should be suitable for the distance of the guard from the nip point, e.g. if the guard is within finger distance of the mesh point, the mesh should be fine enough to limit finger access to the nip point. As a general point, the larger mesh size allows spillage to fall through, decreasing blockages and the requirement to remove guards to clear any blockages.
• Isolation of machinery prior to access of guarded areas can be achieved by a variety of methods including sophisticated, commercially available lockout solutions or electrical gate switches or safety locks such as Fortress Interlock.
• Careful thought on the design of the plant should be conducted to eliminate issues
• Operation of the plant should be conducted to limit spillage so that the need to access to danger areas for maintenance or cleaning is reduced. This limits issues associated with removing and replacing guards and accessing guarded areas
• Appropriate safety signage at site
• Preventative maintenance program is properly conducted
• Operator training/induction to be conducted to ensure operator is aware of risks, control measures and proper operating procedure
• Regular competency assessment of operators
• Supervision & auditing of procedures to be regularly conducted

NEXT STEPS

The Workshop attendees will have an opportunity to provide comments on the draft Workshop material. This will then be used to update CMPA material which will then be available as resource material for all members as well as providing input into the development of WorkSafe material.

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