OSHA just issued its Top 10 list of most frequently cited standards for 2005. Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) finished fifth. Last year, it was fourth. LOTO is confusing. It's also technical and hard to comply with. So, while its exact place might change from year to year, as long as OSHA keeps a Top 10 you can bet LOTO will be on it.

This article will discuss the "TO" aspect of LOTO. When you shut off a piece of equipment or machinery for servicing, you must ensure that it remains shut off, that it isn't unexpectedly energized or activated. The tagout is designed to ensure that people in the area know the equipment is being serviced. OSHA citations are a cheap price to pay for tagout mistakes. Accidental start up of machines during servicing often causes nasty accidents resulting in death, amputation and other grizzly injuries.

A Primer on TO Requirements

OSHA requires employers to control the release of hazardous energy by using either lockout or tagout devices during servicing (or, in some cases, a combination of both):

Lockout involves applying a locking device to the equipment's energy isolating device. It imposes a physical barrier to prevent start-up of the equipment.

Tagout involves notifying people in the area that the machine is being serviced so they don't start it up. Tagout devices are prominently displayed tags securely fastened to a piece of equipment's energy isolating device while the equipment is being serviced. The tagout device warns employees and others not to operate the equipment until an authorized employee removes it.

Since they don't physically bar starting of the equipment, tagout devices are more risky than lockouts. Consequently, you must meet certain additional requirements when using tagout instead of lockout:

• The piece of equipment being serviced must not be capable of being locked out;
• You must be able to demonstrate that using tagout will provide a level of safety "equivalent to that under a lockout program."

The Equivalent Safety Requirement

As you might suspect, it's the equivalent safety part that causes most of the confusion. To demonstrate equivalent safety you must fully comply with all of the technical aspects of the tagout provisions set out in the LOTO standard.

But even that isn't enough. You must also use additional means, such as removing the serviced equipment's isolating circuit element, blocking the equipment's control switch or removing its valve handle. Each of these measures reduces the likelihood of accidental energization during servicing.

Use Checklist to Ensure Compliance

There's a model checklist in the Tools section of SafetyXChange that you can use to ensure compliance with equivalent safety requirements. The Checklist isn't one-size-fits-all. You might have to modify it to meet your particular circumstances.

The first part of the Checklist lists the requirements that tagout devices must meet. It also provides specifics on attaching the tagout device to the serviced equipment.

The second part of the checklist details the issues that you must include in periodic inspections of your energy control program to ensure that employees understand how tagout works and what its limitations are.

Conclusion

Remember that tagout by itself provides less protection than lockout. Using the Checklist in Tools should enable you to use it in a manner that's safe and compliant.

The Canadian Perspective

Although lockout/tagout is also part of Canadian occupational health and safety law, the story above is based on U.S. OSHA requirements. Consequently, its value to Canadian companies is limited. So here's something specific for the Canadian members of SafetyXChange

Liability for Serving Liquor to Employees During a Holiday Party

If you're planning to host a holiday party for your employees and serve alcohol at the affair, here's something to think about. If an employee drinks too much, gets behind the wheel of a car and is involved in an accident, you can be liable to the employee or any third person injured. If you want to look up the cases holding employers liable for serving alcohol to their employees, see:

• Jacobsen v. Nike Canada Ltd. , [1996] B.C.J. No. 363 (BC). (Supervisor brings a cooler of beer to a crew. A crew member gets visibly drunk but nobody tries to prevent him from driving home. On his way home, he drives into a ditch and becomes a quadriplegic. The BC Supreme Court finds the company 75 percent responsible and orders it to pay the crew member $2.7 million in damages.)
• Hunt v. Sutton Group Incentive Realty Inc. , (2001) O.R. (3d) 425 (ON) (A real estate agent drinks too much wine at the company's holiday party. Representatives of the company try to persuade her not to drive but she insists. She gets into an accident. The company is held 25 percent responsible. The Ontario Court of Appeals later reverses the decision on a technicality but doesn't disturb the finding regarding the company's responsibility for preventing the employee from driving.)

What can you do to avoid liability? The first thing is not to serve alcohol. But if you do, take three steps:

1. Keep an eye on how much your guests drink
2. Make reasonable assumptions about whether they're intoxicated
3. If you think they are intoxicated, make a determined effort to keep them from driving

If you would like more details about liability for serving alcohol and how to guard against it, see an article entitled "What's Your Liability for Serving Alcohol to Workers at the Holiday Party?," which is published on the front page of the December issue of a newsletter called Safety Compliance Insider, published by Bongarde Media (www.safetysmart.com).

YOU MAKE THE CALL

Do You Have to Pay Employees for Putting on their PPE?

What Happened: A company requires employees to put on their PPE, walk to their work stations and be ready to work when their shift begins. Employees claim they should be paid for this time. The company disagrees.

Question: Who won?

Answer: The employees. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the time spent putting on PPE and walking to workstations counts as work time under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The case is significant not only on its merits but because it's one of the first handed down by the Court since John Roberts became Chief Justice [IBP Inc. v. Alvarez, No. 03-1238, U.S. Supreme Court, Nov. 8, 2005].

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