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Written by Bryan Haywood

Parent Category: Safety Info Posts

Category: Lockout Tagout

Published: 17 April 2014

Scenario:

A contractor is hired to make repairs to a piece of equipment. This work will require the machine’s energy sources to be isolated per 1910.147. The facility has a machine-specific procedure for said equipment. The contractor follows the machine-specific procedure and uses their company’s LOTO locks per their written LOTO program/practices to lockout this piece of equipment. Right next to this piece of equipment that has been isolated using the contractor’s LOTO locks is another contractor installing a new and identical piece of equipment. The contractors that performed the lockout used a very popular brand of silver locks - some with blue bands and some with yellow bands. The host employer’s LOTO program uses “color” to identify their LOTO locks, and they use a solid red lock for their energy isolations. The site has a contractor safety orientation program for all contractors, and during said orientation, they train all the contractors that site LOTO locks are red in color.

Does this sound familiar to anyone? Maybe your facility has a contractor safety orientation where LOTO locks are identified by color, shape, or size for all the contractors so that they can identify LOTO locks. Maybe your facility allows contractors to isolate machinery/equipment using their own LOTO locks. If any of this sounds familiar, this article may be of interest.

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