Safety in machinery design and construction: Performance for substantive safety outcomes

Occupational safety during interventions in confined spaces

“…Thus, it would be in the interests of OHS personnel and workers involved in confined space work to expand the scope of their actions beyond atmospheric hazards. Moreover, the conditions under which confined spaces are to be used and the tasks to be performed there must be envisaged right from the design stage in order to eliminate or limit the hazards at that time (Canadian Standards Association, 2010; ANSI/ASSE, 2011; Bluff, 2014;Fadier and De la Garza, 2006). Access conditions and adequacy of the equipment control system are examples of potential problems identified in our accident analysis.…”

Safety in machinery design and construction: Knowledge and performance

“…The qualitative methods for data collection and analysis applied in this research were described in detail in the earlier paper (Bluff, 2014). In summary, the 66 study firms were a mix of small, medium and large businesses 1 which were based in the Australian states of Victoria and South Australia, and designed, constructed and supplied machinery for use at work in a wide variety of industries, within Australia and internationally.…”

“…Summary statistics were used for the purpose of comparing the performance of firms with particular practices, capacities or characteristics to the performance of the sample of 66 firms overall. The standard for comparison here was the research finding (Bluff, 2014) that in the sample overall 30% (20/66) comprehensively recognized the hazards for their machinery; 14% (9/66) had a blinkered focus on mechanical hazards; 47% (31/66) used safe place controls as the primary risk control measures; 17% (11/66) used some advanced or innovative safe place controls; and 24% (16/66) provided substantial, good quality safety information.…”

“…In an earlier paper published in Safety Science, Bluff (2014) presented the findings of empirical research investigating how machinery manufacturers addressed safety matters. These Australian based firms supplied machinery into global markets, including the European Economic Area, and had legal obligations to design and construct safe machinery under Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) law (Bluff, 2004;Johnstone, 1997Johnstone, , pp 260-263, 2004, and the European regulatory regime based on the Machinery Directive (European Commission, 1998, 2006.…”

“…The research evaluated manufacturers' performance for three substantive safety outcomes -hazard recognition, risk control and safety information, which were critical for complying with the regulatory goal of prevention (Bluff, 2014). Some firms did comply with this regulatory goal as they comprehensively recognized the different types and instances of hazards for their machinery and incorporated more effective safe place controls as the primary risk control measures.…”