Top Electrical & Product Safety Mistakes for 2011

It’s a little early to close the books on 2011, but hopefully many of you are reviewing your 2011 goals and thinking about your plan for implementing your 2012 goals.  You should also be considering Electrical and Product Safety goals for 2012.

To assist you in making your Electrical and Product Safety goals for the upcoming year, I thought I would share the top safety mistakes that I have seen this year.

• Not using updated safety standards because they are (or seem to be) too expensive to procure
• Relying on equipment installers to correct any design errors
• Not performing a risk assessment
• Following standards and not understanding the merits of using risk assessments
• Not designing equipment so that maintenance can be accomplished safely
• Designers failing to recognize when they need to have safety experts involved
• Relying on Safety, Health & Environmental professionals to be experts in specific areas of safety, e.g. electrical safety, functional safety, etc.
• Relying on training and personal protective equipment (PPE) instead of designing out safety hazards
• Not using basic statistical techniques

Over the coming months, I will explore some of the safety mistakes from this list and provide you with suggestions, metrics, or concepts to help you reduce, minimize, or eliminate them within your organization.

In the mean time, if you have a list of safety mistakes or questions related to electrical and product safety, please send me an e-mail or give me a call.