In today’s Virtual Breakfast Forum, members and guests heard from Ian Rood Principal, at UBSafe Inc.

UBSafe focusses on the safeguarding of machinery, consulting, risk assessment, and education. Ian started his presentation with a review of legislative requirements around safety and safeguarding.

He then discussed some of the key terms and expectations, including some real-life examples of how safeguarding works. What is safeguarding? Safeguarding is ensuring something is in place on a machine to prevent injury when the machine is in operation.

A thorough risk assessment is integral to determine what level of safeguarding you need, based on the machinery. A safeguard must be capable of effectively performing its intended function.

What is lockout? This is a physical prevention from operating a piece of equipment ie eliminating the energy source.  When a lockout is in place, you could lose time, efficiency and productivity, but it’s important to lockout when installing, repairing, cleaning, lubricating and clearing of obstructions (ex. a jam). There are standards around how to safeguard that need to be followed, so be sure that your organization is educated on how to perform risk assessments on machines.

There are companies like UBSafe that do education and training on safeguarding. It’s important to put these measures in place to keep our employees safe. Thank you Ian for introducing this highly technical safety process, many members received great value from the presentation.