Health & safety bulletin
LOTO Incidents
29th April 2010
In March, Xmo teams were undertaking re-imaging work on a filling station that was being developed. Prior to the team attending, and as part of the overall site scope, a nominated electrical contractor had attended site to isolate the electrical feeds.
Prior to commencing work on the fascia, our lead engineer, Andy Wyer, carried out a visual check at the main board to satisfy himself that the isolation procedure had been carried out correctly. He also ensured he was satisfied that the work had been carried out by a specialist electrical contractor with suitable and sufficient knowledge, experience, practical ability and training; the company employed had an excellent reputation and Andy felt satisfied and proceeded to access the canopy fascia.
Prior to actually starting the work, he followed our formal procedure and tested the feed to satisfy himself that it was still safe to go-ahead; alarmingly, the feed to the fascia was still live, despite apparently being disconnected at the board. The job was stopped immediately, the principal contractor was advised and further investigation revealed that the circuit breakers at the board were incorrectly labelled. The canopy fascia circuit breaker was labelled as “security floods” so had not been disconnected.
Fortunately Andy had followed his procedures and training which may very well have saved his life. We had an almost identical situation last year where pumps were incorrectly labelled and again, our testing procedures prevented us working on a live dispenser that our pump sprayer thought he had locked out and tagged out.
Within 2 weeks of this incident, a contractor appointed by one of our customers was stopped from working by an Xmo site supervisor because they were about to start work on a circuit that wasn't locked off; the background to the issue was that they were using a hired van and had left their LOTO kit in the one being serviced. I'm pleased that the Xmo team used one of our LOTO kits to mitigate the potential hazard at source and then allowed the work to continue safely.
PLEASE HEED THESE WARNINGS AND MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW OUR LOCK-OUT TAG OUT PROCEDURE AND ALWAYS TEST ELECTRICAL FEEDS BEFORE YOU WORK ON EQUIPMENT.
Our supervisors will use this bulletin as a toolbox talk and will test the understanding of the LOTO procedure. If anyone requires new LOTO checklists please call Natascha in the office.
The below ExxonMobil safety alert (which is not related to works undertaken by us) shows what can go wrong when the correct LOTO procedures are not followed.
Click here to download the bulletin (143Kb PDF file)