Stuart Wright, our Ex-Officio committee member from Worksafe sent a message this morning to alert us to new content on the WORKSAFE website:

Keeping workers safe with machine lockouts 

"This guidance advises small to medium PCBUs how to use lockouts to safely isolate and de-energise the parts of machinery that could cause harm to workers when servicing this machinery."

To see their guidance follow this link:  Keeping workers safe with machine lockouts.

We welcome the effort by WORKSAFE to provide guidance, however we would like to remind everyone that lockout procedures are administrative controls, and they rely heavily on people adhering to procedures. We know sometimes they don't; The NZSSE therefore recommends, where at all possible, engineering controls or controls higher up on the Hierarchy of Control to reduce the risk further . (Higher up on the Hierarchy of Controls are typically more reliable.)