What is Control of Work
Your Control of Work process is one of the most fundamental and important elements of workplace safety and operational efficiency. But what does it entail?
Control of Work can essentially be broken down into four different aspects: risk management, Permit-to-work, isolations management or lockout/tagout (LOTO), as well as competency management.
Each of these elements is an important piece of the puzzle to achieve a healthy and productive work environment.
Let’s explore each.
Risk management
Risk management entails how you mitigate risk across your organisation. This is done by identifying potential hazards, analysing the impact they may have, putting corrective actions in place to control them, and reviewing this process whenever new processes, equipment, roles, etc. are made. Risk management can be accomplished through task-based risk assessments, point-of-work risk assessments, and much more.
Permit to Work
Your Permit-to-Work (PTW) process is essentially the gateway for safe work on-site. This process is necessary to ensure all precautions have been taken to protect workers and external contractors. For example, let’s say you require extra maintenance work in the form of hot work and you’re bringing on an external contractor to complete the job.
First, you must create your permit internally, mentioning where the work will take place, at what time, with whom, the type of work which will be done, as well as some other details. Then you must request the contractor, who is an expert in this area, to provide a risk assessment which outlines the risks and hazards associated and specific to hot work. Review this internally to check for any possible missing hazards that might be present on your site related to hot work.
Once everything is in order, either one or several levels of management may need to review and approve it all to provide the authority to proceed safely. At this point, the permit is issued, and the contractor is brought on-site.
Part of your permit-to-work process also includes SIMOPs or simultaneous operations. This entails managing risks related to having multiple workers in the same location, who might have conflicting hazardous work. For instance, if one person is working with gas, it’s important that another who may be working with an open flame is not present.
Isolations Mangement (LOTO):
IIsolations management, also known as lockout/tagout (LOTO), is the process by which equipment is safely de-energised and shut off. When working with heavy-duty machinery, this procedure is vital to protect workers from harmful consequences. What could happen? When equipment is not properly isolated and turned off, unwanted hazardous energy in the form of thermal, chemical, mechanical, electrical energy and more could be accidentally released with deadly consequences. This is why it’s important to have proper LOTO procedures in place and train workers on how to effectively complete them.
Competency Management
Competency management is essential to ensuring the right people are in place to complete the right tasks safely. This element of Control of Work means that you need to do your due diligence to ensure that the people you employ, including contractors, can complete their job tasks safely. This includes checking that they’ve completed all the necessary training, in addition to having the competency to complete the tasks. How can you check competency? This could be reviewed through references, asking them to submit their incident rates and much more.
