Timber iQ June - July 2018 // Issue: 38 | Page 42

FEATURES The bulk of responsibility for compliance regarding machinery and equipment lies both with the manufacturer and the purchasing party or employer. Continued from page 38 employer. “These include, among others, the Driven Machinery Regulations, General Machinery Regulations, Facilities Regulations, Pressure Equipment Regulations, and Electrical Installation Regulations. A health and safety professional will need to look at all legislation when putting together a health and safety management system specifically for a sawmill.” SAFETY ELEMENTS AT SAWMILLS As is true for any industrial environment, health and safety in the sawmill depends on two important factors: the creation and maintenance of a safe working environment and the prevention of unsafe acts or omissions by employees. “Physical controls such as good housekeeping, proper machine guarding, lighting, and ventilation are relatively easy to achieve, but the modification and control of human behaviour is considerably more difficult,” Wainwright observes. “Aside from the general hazards associated with all factory-type operations where moving machinery is used, sawmills by their very nature present particular hazards in 40 JUNE / JULY 2018 // terms of wood dust and noise. The effective management of noise and prevention of noise-induced hearing loss is a particularly difficult challenge. Although every effort is made to reduce noise where practicable, enforcement in the compliance to use of hearing protection by employees is not easy and requires constant vigilance,” he notes. According to Bradley Joemat, group safety manager at the MTO forestry group, the company defines five elements of safety in sawmills as follows: premises, operations and housekeeping; mechanical, electrical and personal safeguarding; fire protection and prevention; incident recording and investigation; and health and safety organisation. TRANSGRESSIONS: MAN AND MACHINE The greatest contributing factor to a transgression in terms of safety at a sawmill is ‘the human factor’, which, according to Swift, “Is the decisive decision or pure lapse in judgement where an employee fails to follow a procedure or safety rule. This employee non-compliance may result in an incident that causes an injury. An incident can be a costly See more on page 42