Inspection of machinery

Inspection of machinery is crucial to ensuring longevity for your machinery or equipment but also important to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations and guidelines for the workforce. The types of safety inspection needed differ as with the frequency based on the risk assessment, the experience of people using the machinery and how old the machinery is. You should really use your initiative when deciding when you carry out your inspections but don’t skip corners; it can affect your workers safety. You need to follow certain procedures to ensure the equipment is usable.

Inspection of machinery

Firstly you need to read your manufacturers recommendations for the specific machine in question. What they state in the book should be checked. No one understands the machinery better than the creator so if they tell you to check something, it for an important reason and must be done. When you carry out the inspection it needs to be thorough, focusing on all workplace elements including the equipment, environment and process.

Safety Equipment. This not only includes the machinery but the things needed for the operator to do their job without any risks. You should run the machines as the operator would on a daily basis. You should check for il and air leakages, rust, signs of wear and look at how smoothly the machine runs. Record everything from this test, including any negative areas as these will need to be sorted. Upon recording this, you should check that you have everything you need to be safe while in control of that machinery. Do you have hi-visibility clothing, ear muffs if around noisy machinery, safety goggles? Are the accessories you do have sufficient to protect your workers? All these need to be considered and recorded in the inspection log.

Environment. When working with chemicals or biological hazards, certain precautions need to be taken with regards to the environment to ensure total safety. Safety signage and ventilation is required as a minimum to ensure no accidents occur. Look at these when carrying out your inspection and check to see if they are sufficient for the operations. These are dangerous so attention should be immediately drawn to these problems. If chemicals are used, you will need to do an inventory as part of your inspection to detail what is used whether it is properly controlled.

Regular inspections need to be carried out often and it is not over with a simple record of data. You should use your safety log to build a checklist for the next inspection, adding to this with problems or new risks you come across. You also need to create a report based on your data, detailing next steps and what to do with any problems you find. Carry out the inspections properly, they should be done by your site manager and if they feel inexperienced with this work, why not call in the professional. Arrange quarterly inspection and machinery maintenance inspections to ensure you do meet health and safety regulations to the appropriate safety standard.