Confined Space Consulting in Kamloops
The past year has seen our reputation grow as a high quality training center, a safety equipment retailer, and a provider of top notch occupational health and safety consulting. What was perhaps most interesting about the work we performed in the past year is how much of it was related to working in confined spaces. Throughout Kamloops and surrounding regions, clients asked for our assistance in addressing the hazards and risks of confined space work. We are quickly becoming the source for confined space consulting in Kamloops and the rest of BC. For those of you who do not know what I am referring to when I mention confined space requirements; an employer is required (by section 9.5 of the BC Occupational Health and Safety Regulations) to provide the following information:
1. An assignment of responsibilities
2. A list of each confined space or group of similar spaces and a hazard assessment of those spaces, an
3. Written safe work procedures for entry into and work in the confined space, that address, where applicable
(ii) lockout and isolation,
(iii) verification and testing,
(iv) cleaning, purging, venting or inerting,
(v) ventilation,
(vi) standby persons,
(vii) rescue,
(viii) lifelines, harnesses and lifting equipment,
(ix) personal protective equipment and other precautions, and
(x) coordination of work activities.
Workers perform a mock decontamination outside of a confined space.
Judging by this list of requirements, it is easy to see why employers often require some help when planning their confined space projects. We often assist clients through all the steps required to develop a confined space entry program. We will start at square one; confined space identification (which is not as easy as it sounds), develop hazard assessments that are clear and easily understandable, and then develop entry procedures that provide a detailed step-by-step account of how the confined space entry is to be performed and what controls will be required to eliminate the hazards.
Workers finish cleaning out a water retention tank beneath a parkade project in downtown Kamloops.
What makes OH&S Safety Consulting and Training Solutions unique is the extent to which we are able to provide service to our clients. After hiring a consultant to develop the initial confined space hazard assessments and entry procedures, most employers will then need to outsource confined space entry training, standby services, lockout procedures, personal protective equipment, and sometimes standby rescue services. As a full service safety provider, OH&S can provide all of the services mentioned above in addition to professional and qualified consulting services at the outset.
A rescue technician performing a practice descent into a barge on Williston Lake. The rescue assessments we develop are backed up by practice scenarios.
In closing I leave you with some photos taken from several projects we were involved in in 2015. Thank you to all the businesses who chose OH&S Safety Consulting and Training Solutions as your confined space entry consultant this year!
Looking down into a catch basin where a worker is cleaning debris from the basin’s inlet.
A practice scenario inside the dry well of a lift station. We wanted to be sure that the crew had the training necessary to evacuate an immobile worker from the space so we practiced with a life-sized Rescue Randy.