Work Shop Safety

Workshop rules and safety considerations

Workshop safety is everyone’s responsibility, the following rules have been put in place to ensure the safety of all students and staff. Please read the safety rules carefully before entering the workshop.

Workshop rules

Student affected by drugs or alcohol are not permittedin the workshop
Students with any health problems that may affect workplace safety (e.g. medication, epileptic fits) must report these conditions to the workshop staff
Notify the workshop staff of your arrival
No food or drink in the workshop
Wear the correct protective equipment for the tools you are using – ask if in doubt
All chemicals (e.g. glues and paints) must be checked through Chemwatch and with workshop staff before use
Immediately notify the workshop supervisor of any faulty or broken equipment
Ask how to use the tools safely
Make sure your work piece is fixed securely before work commences
Keep leads up off the floor
Keep clear of any person operating tools and machinery (bumping an operator or get tangled in the lead could cause serious injury to you or the operator)
Do not talk to anyone operating electrical equipment and machinery
Keep your work area tidy
Clean up any spills immediately
Wash hands after using equipment and materials causes of workshop accident

Most Common Causes of Workplace Accidents

Mark Twain once said, “It is better to be careful 100 times than to get killed once.” Think about this; 80 of every 100 accidents that happen in the workplace are ultimately the fault of the person involved in the incident. What does this tell us? Workers are not taking the proper precautionary measures before working, or they are simply too lazy to be bothered with it. After all, they do their jobs everyday right?

Why do they need to waste their time with tedious things like inspections and precautionary measures? Well, considering the above statistic, there should be an ample amount of evidence to convince lazy and neglectful workers to start paying more attention to correct safety measures. A majority of workers seem to like to find “things” to blame when workplace accidents occur rather than “root causes”.

However, there are 7 common causes for workplace accidents, and “root causes” account for every single one of them. To give workers more incentive to practice proper safety measures within the workplace, we have compiled these 7 common causes to give a better illustration of what the root causes of accidents in the workplace are.

Shortcuts

Humans are notoriously lazy, so taking shortcuts is a rather common practice in all walks of life, not necessarily work alone. However, when workers take shortcuts at work, especially when they are working around dangerous machinery or lethal chemicals, they are only exposing themselves to a potential catastrophe. Simply put, shortcuts that are taken on the job are not actually shortcuts. They are simply increasing your risk of injury, or worse, death.

Overconfidence

Confidence is always a great thing to have, but there is also such a thing as too much confidence. When workers walk into work everyday with the attitude that, “It will never happen to me”, they are setting an attitude that leads to incorrect procedures, methods, and tools while working. Be confident, but remember that you are not invincible.

Poor, or Lack Of Housekeeping

Whenever someone walks through your workplace, they can get a pretty good idea of your attitude towards workplace safety by just looking at how well you’ve kept up your area. Housekeeping is one of the most accurate indicators of the company’s attitude towards production, quality, and worker safety. A poorly kept up area leads to hazards and threats everywhere. Not only does good housekeeping lead to heightened safety, but it also sets a good standard for everyone else in the workplace to follow.

Starting a Task Before Getting All Necessary Information

The quickest way to get a job done is to do it right the first time. To do it right the first time, you need to make sure that you have any and all pertinent information relating to the task you will be performing. Workers who begin a job with just half the information, or half the instructions, are essentially doing the job while blind. Remember this; it’s not stupid to ask questions, it is stupid not to.

Neglecting Safety Procedures

This is probably the worst thing that any employee at any level in the organization can do. Deliberately neglecting set safety procedures in the workplace doesn’t just endanger yourself, but it endangers the workers around you as well as the company as a whole. Casually following safety procedures doesn’t work either. You are paid to follow workplace safety procedures, not your own.

Mental Distractions

Everyone has a life outside of the workplace, and sometimes life can take dips and turns that affect your emotions and your mood negatively. However, as harsh as it sounds, workers cannot let mental distractions from their personal lives affect their performance at work. Not only will they become less aware of their surroundings and less safe, but they will also become less productive, costing the company time and money.

Lack of Preparation

You may have heard of something called Job Hazard Analysis (JHA). JHA’s are an effective method of figuring out the best way to work safely and efficiently. When workers begin a task without thinking through the process beforehand, or hastily start without any type of planning, they are setting themselves up for failure. Make sure you plan your work, then work your plan.

There are several reasons why workplace accidents happen, but these 7 are the most common, and sadly, the most overlooked, causes. It really comes down to awareness and focus. Lazy workers are not as effective and they are not as safe as their aware and focused counterparts. On top of this, lazy workers immediately become a direct threat to everyone around them. There needs to be a conscious effort each and every day in the workplace to make sure that these 7 causes don’t happen. Your life, your coworkers’ lives, and your company’s overall well-being depends on it. types of work shop accident

Driving-related injuries

This is related to driving heavy machinery in storage, warehouses or pretty much and industrial sectors where these machines are required. These accidents don’t happen that often and they can be kept at a minimum with proper staff training and use of adequate machinery.

On the Job Violent Acts

Attacks and disputes resulted as office politics happen rarely and they mostly occur in stressful work environments where people work closely together. It is important to keep employee diligence and have some sort of supervision over your workers.

Repetitive Motion Injuries

These are often overlooked injuries as they happen over the course of time and it takes a while for the individual to actually notice the injury and realize the cause of injury. These injuries can be resulted as working in an unnatural position doing a repetitive movement or even just sitting in front of the computer for long hours, which can cause back pain, muscle strains or carpal tunnel syndrome.

Work Related Hearing loss

Working in extremely loud environment can cause noise induced hearing loss, which the sufferer may notice after decades of work. Ways to protect against this is to wear protective gear that will protect your ears.

Walking Into – Accidents

Well this pretty much happens everywhere, the busy lifestyle of 21st century makes us loose focus, and occasionally run into objects. This is type of accidents in the offices often causes head, knee, neck and other types of injuries. Only way to minimize these accidents is for people to have more focus, which is kinda hard to achieve.

Injuries From Falling Objects

Objects can fall on you from various places or dropped by someone. Head injuries are mostly results of these accidents. To prevent this from happening, employee diligence and employers focus to keep the workplace free from hazard is necessary. Also wearing safety gear like hard hat can keep employees safe from injuries in places where these types of accident happen more often.

Reaction Injuries

People can suffer injuries when tripping or slipping without even falling. They can strain their muscles or body trauma when they move all of a sudden to prevent them selves from falling. These injuries can be quite serious so be careful when crossing slippery surfaces or places where you can easily trip.

Falling From Heights

These accidents can be very serious with some cases resulting in fatal injury. This usually happens in elevated work environment like rooftops, stairways and ladders. This is mostly associated with construction industry. The cause of these accidents can be negligence or faulty equipment, and it is recommended to use proper safety gear, staff training and employee diligence.

Slipping/Tripping

The second most frequent workplace accident. This mainly happens by people slipping on wet surfaces or tripping on something lying on the floor. Employees need to pay good attention to their surroundings and the employer needs to make sure that everything is in order and safe for work.

Overexertion Injuries

This are by far the most common type of injuries at work, it involves lifting, pushing, carrying, pulling, and other types of moving heavy objects. Overexertion is not only number only most consistent injury, over the course of years but also most costly work accident. The overexertion accidents cost over 3$ million in compensation claims yearly.

Note that providing safety gear and proper training to your employee to where its needed will greatly reduce the amount of accidents occurring. prevention of work shop accident

RULES FOR PREVENTION OF ACCIDENTS IN WORKSHOPS

The following notice for the guidance of employees is now conspicuously exhibited in our Workshops:—

Never turn on any power to set machinery in motion without first seeing that no one is in a position to be injured.
Do not oil, adjust, or clean machinery while it is in motion.
If, for any purpose, fencing or other safeguards are removed, do not forget to replace them before restarting work.
Do not operate any machinery unless authorised by proper authority.
If a driving belt has to be adjusted or replaced, do not attempt this unless the machinery is first stopped. In shops where a special man is engaged for attending to main belts he should be notified at once; machinists should not attempt to replace main belts unless instructed to do so by the foreman or leading hand.
Avoid wearing loose, torn clothing, long neckties, loose bootlaces or finger rings. All are dangerous as they are liable to be caught in moving parts of machinery.
Boards containing projecting nails should not be left lying about. When you see such boards either turn them over or bend the nails down.
When removing turnings, chips, shavings, etc., from machines, stop the machines first; provide yourself with a brush or other suitable cleaner. Do not remove them with your fingers or hands.
When chipping with hammer and chisel, working at emery wheel, casting with a hand ladle, or doing any work for which it is necessary to protect the eyes, special goggles should be worn.
Ladders should be placed at a safe angle to prevent slipping away, falling sideways or backwards. Secure ladders to prevent slipping away. Ladders should not be placed on running shafting.
questions
mention 2 causes of workshop accident
describe 5 workshop accident.