Machinery & Equipment Guarding - Protecting Pinch Points

Welcome back, let's Build Smart & Build Safe! We've covered the critical "caught-in" risks in excavations. Today, we're shifting our focus to a different kind of squeeze: machinery and equipment guarding.

On any construction site, powerful tools and equipment have moving parts that create pinch points, shear points, and crush zones. Guards are the physical barriers that protect you from these hazards, and they must never be underestimated.

The Purpose of Guards: Your First Line of Defense

Guards are physical barriers designed to prevent your body, clothing, or hair from coming into contact with dangerous moving parts. They are not an option—they are a critical safety feature built to protect you from:

• Entanglement: Getting caught in rotating shafts, pulleys, gears, or chains.

• Crushing and Amputation: Being caught in machinery that cuts, shears, or crushes materials.

Never Remove or Defeat a Guard

This is a non-negotiable rule. A guard's purpose is to protect you, not to be an inconvenience. It may seem like a guard is slowing you down or making a task harder, but removing it exposes you to immediate and severe danger. If a guard is broken or missing, tag the equipment "DO NOT USE" and report it immediately.

Lockout/Tagout (LOTO): The Ultimate Protection

Even with guards in place, there are times when you need to perform maintenance or repairs, exposing dangerous moving parts. This is where Lockout/Tagout is essential.

• What it is: A LOTO procedure ensures that machinery is completely de-energized and locked so that it cannot be turned on unexpectedly while you are working on it.

• The Danger: Without LOTO, a machine could start up accidentally, crushing or entangling you and leading to severe or fatal injuries.

Machinery guarding and LOTO procedures are fundamental to preventing caught-in/between incidents. They are physical reminders that we must respect the power of the equipment we work with.

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-The Safety Man