Hot work

[Robotstar5]

Had to weld a couple of brackets inside one the robot welding cells, looked like a chance to try out new stick inverter maintenance have just bought.

Along comes Safety officer who is bored because most of factory is on holiday, "where is your hot work permit?", I tried to explain welding is main company business and I wanted to weld in a cell where welding takes place 24/7 during production - falls on deaf ears, OK you win, give me a permit, "you'll have to wait 'til I get back to the office"

So I left it for 3 days, he kept phoning to find out when we wanted permit, "will let you know" says I.

We did the welding this morning when he wasn't in

 

[Hitch]

I know just what you mean.

One of our customers has a H&S man which is renowned for stupid things like that.

Most people just sit in theire vans when hes about.

 

[malcolm]

Daft isn't it. I needed one a couple of months ago. The job didn't involve welding, but I needed to modify something. Didn't work out what the procedure would have been go get a hot work permit as welding was off-limits due to them not having suitable extraction. (Was only a little bit).

Agreed with the management that I'd not approached them about it in the first place, in exchange for them not seeing me do the work.

 

[Hitch]

The site i was on last week was a no 240v, no ladders (unless you had a permit)
No one about really.
I asked for a permit to use a 240v welder, "as long as its PAT tested, just use it."
Couldnt acess a few bolts from scaffolding... site manager gave me a ladder to use... no one to hold it, over an open manhole....

 

[malcolm]

Tis a bit silly. To be fair on the site H&S enforcers there's so much information about what has to be enforced, and they've probably got jobs to do as well, so they err on the side of caution to keep their workload down. So people find workarounds.

Personal responsibility on the part of the operator might seem more sensible as operators tend to be more specialist and will have fewer things to find out. But some operators might be idiots, and while there's nothing wrong with natural selection, sods law says they'll take someone else out. Hence the current system I guess.

 

[Robotstar5]

Funny thing is, all of the maintenance are company fire wardens and I had offered to stand there with an extinguisher while my mate did the welding - still no good

 

[Hitch]

Things like not being allowed to stand on the back of a flatbed sprinter without fall arrest equiptment of airbags all round the back is crazy though

Not quite as crazy as a hot works to weld in a welding cell though!

 

[snowcat]

Oh they are gits, I had to get one too weld two pieces of tube to the front of a blade on a dozer to hold the GPS rigging, 2 minutes work, an hours paper work, the dozer was also packed on 10 acres of mud!!, needed a banksman on fire duty to boot, who much to his disgust had to stay for an hour after I left to make sure none of that mud went up!!!, jobs for the boys indeed.

 

[Paul.]

Was standing on a kitchen stool to put 6 pop rivets in a specialist vehicle, H&S man made me stop work until I have been ladder trained, they provided the training, just a short film and a tick box question sheet, I just added an hours labour to the bill to cover it, most expensive pop rivets ever!

 

[Hitch]

No halogen lighting...its a fire risk.

To a steel and concrete carpark!