Prevention through design – a tip to make things easier

The March issue of ASSE’s Professional Safety magazine was devoted to the subject of Prevention through Design (PtD), with three excellent articles that covered:

• Integrating PtD into undergraduate curricula
• Design methods for implementing PtD, including things like policy, standards, processes and procedures, management of change, etc.
• Business cases supporting PtD solutions

What I rarely see is something that the writer actually put into practice.  In 1970 (some of us lived in ancient times), I was a graduate engineer responsible for purchasing millions of dollars of production equipment for Chevrolet engines.  A few months into the job, we were called into the Master Mechanic’s office (chief manufacturing engineer) and advised that the Walsh Healy act had passed and we were now responsible for OSHA compliance.  Our bosses told us not to look to safety because they had no more information than they did.

We were engineers – what the heck did we know about safety?  The answer – precious little. But our bosses made us personally responsible for noise, guarding, ventilation and engineered controls for employee safety.   One thing all engineers know is this:  If you miss something in the bid specification and place an order for a machine or process, you will pay big time to get the added features.  While in the competitive bid stage, many of those items might have been no cost.

We learned something that all PtD proponents should put into practice immediately — make sure your bid package requires vendors to detail costs for noise control, guards, etc.  In some cases, you may ask for different options because you, the buyer, will determine what is feasible for your operations.  Not only is it right for the purchaser to put responsibility on the supplier but you’ll quickly flush out those who aren’t qualified to handle the job.  Once the bid is awarded, engineering and safety can demand CAD drawings or equivalent of the safeguards just like the base machine, sub assemblies and components.

Don’t wait until the machine is nearly done to start safeguarding – demand that the vendor offer solutions in the competitive bid stage.