Lockout/Tagout audits

An annual review of your lockout/tagout program is the perfect opportunity for employers to identify possible weaknesses in their program. If the study is conducted thoroughly and focused on safety, employers can correct possible deficiencies before they result in consequences.  Visual Safety Systems can audit your machine-specific procedures or your entire Lockout/Tagout program. 

The procedure audits aim to identify any deviations or inadequacies in the current procedures. Our lockout/tagout engineers consider the following:

• Are the procedures and correlating energy isolation tags present and legible?
• Are all energy sources accounted for?
• Do procedures accurately represent associated machinery?

Your employees deserve to have 100% accurate lockout/tagout procedures when mandated by company policy and OSHA regulations to follow posted lockout/tagout procedures. 

If your machine-specific lockout/tagout procedures were created by unqualified personnel, your procedures likely do not meet all OSHA-required standards. An example of the more frequent issues we find is that energy sources such as associated machinery, gravity, thermal, release of air, and rotation are often the highest missed energy sources.

Visual Safety Systems offers a low-cost machine-specific review and audit of your current lockout/tagout procedures. As part of the audit, we also generate a complete list of equipment lacking lockout/tagout procedures. 

Annual audits of employees' knowledge of the lockout/tagout program are a great way to gauge strengths and weaknesses on the subject and the program. This includes procedure efficiency, means of enforcement, program management, and the effectiveness of employee training.

Here are a few example questions we ask employees to gauge employee proficiency:

• What is the importance of lockout/tagout?
• When is a machine required to be locked out?
• What are the steps to shutdown and startup?
• Does the employee understand how to isolate each type of energy source?
• Does the employee understand how to properly apply devices, locks, and tags?
• When is a group lockout necessary?

These questions will allow employers to understand their authorized employees' knowledge of lockout/tagout and ensure they use the program correctly. If any deficiencies are found, further training will be recommended.

 Another option is annual audit lockout/tagout refresher training, which Visual Safety Systems can provide.