SAFETY SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY LAUNCHES GUARDING SERVICE TO PROTECT COMPANIES FROM BEING CAUGHT OUT BY LAW CHANGES

Given their essential safety role, guards are often treated surprisingly casually and continue to be the cause of many injuries and accidents that could have been prevented had appropriate and fit-for-purpose guards been in use.

With this in mind, it’s not surprising that current safety legislation gives a lot of attention to guards and as a result a great many individuals and companies are breaking health and safety laws without being aware that they are doing so. The new Machinery Safety Directive, 2006/42/EC, which came into force at the end of 2009, introduced a whole range of new requirements for guards, not the least of which is that they must carry CE marking.

To carry CE marking a product must comply with all applicable EU standards and there are a great many standards that apply to guards. Just a few examples are EN 953, Safety of Machinery – Guards – General Requirements; EN ISO 13857 – Safety of Machinery – Safety distances to prevent hazard zones being reached by upper and lower limbs; and EN 349 – Safety of Machinery – Minimum gaps to avoid crushing of parts of the human body. There are many others, including many “Type C” standards that apply specifically to particular types of machine.

“Clearly, achieving full standards compliance for a guard, which is necessary if it is to carry the CE marking, is no trivial task. And it’s certainly not a task that can be readily tackled with an ad-hoc design and the services of the local engineering company” says Gary Trewhitt of Safety Systems Technology. “CE marking, along with the design and manufacture of guards, now requires specialist expertise which is why we have launched our new guarding service” .

This need for expertise is further reinforced when the other changes to guarding requirements brought in by the new Machinery Safety Directive are considered. Section 1.4.1 of the Essential Health and Safety Requirements (ESHRs) now requires that guards must protect against the ejection of falling materials and objects. Section 1.4.2.1 has added requirements that for fixed guards, the fixing systems must remain attached to the guards when removed, and also that, where possible, guards must be incapable of remaining in position without their fixings.

In some cases these new requirements may be easy to satisfy, but in many they will not, and in every case a considerable level of expertise will be needed to ensure that guards satisfy all regulatory requirements. In these cases, specialist guarding design, assessment and manufacturing services, of the type offered by Safety Systems Technology’s guarding service, offer a convenient, affordable and dependable solution.