Coronavirus and what could it mean for your obligations as an Employer under PUWER following Covid-19.

As factories return to work following the lock-down the task list for Health and Safety, Human Resources and Engineering Managers is already extensive enough. Just to put in the mix, changes in production processes and machinery may mean that the safety of that machinery will need to be reconsidered.

Putting a screen in place to protect one employee from another could be a simple solution and may protect them from airborne or biological hazards, but then are they;

• Able to get to an existing Emergency Stop?
• Do they need to climb over a conveyor to get to that control station which was perfectly accessible by some steps before?
• How do they see all around the equipment from the control station?
• Maybe you even need to consider Lone Working aspects in the Risk Assessment.

Significant changes to a machine or work equipment means at the least you should review your #PUWER Assessment to see if any changes have negatively affected the safety of the equipment. The Risk Assessment may need modifying too. Then you are obliged to make some modifications to ensure the safe use of the machinery. Don't forget the cleaning and maintenance too.

As ever, great support is available on the #HSE website and the Approved Code of Practice #ACOP is a free download.

Documentation is key, if is isn't recorded, it hasn't happened! Make sure any changes and reviews are updated in the files.

Just some more hurdles to jump over but there seems little point to protecting workers from one hazard only expose them to others. It is going to be a hard road back to where we were, for those with long memories of classic American TV, "Let's be careful out there".