Machinery risk assessments are critical to ensuring you have safe plant, and are the best way to help keep your people safe and meet your legal obligations. They help you identify potential hazards associated with machinery, and show you what control measures need to be implemented to control the risks.
Plant Assessor’s risk assessment software will help you identify and assess the risks of harm across your fleet. Its clever Machinery Compliance Engine (MCE) takes all the complexity out of the process and does the hard work for you. Pick your machine, answer some simple questions and the MCE does the rest. The MCE identifies hazards specific to your selected machine, it rates the level of risk per hazard from low to catastrophic and provides a detailed report referencing legislation per the risk treatments that need to be applied to achieve compliance.
What is the Machinery Compliance Engine (MCE)?
Plant Assessor risk assessments are powered by the MCE, a sophisticated piece of tech developed to automate the identification of hazards, set risk ratings and provide applicable control measures per referenced legislation from WHS acts, regulations, standards and codes of practice.
The MCE is based on the measures that should be used by duty holders to manage risk and safety. These measures include:
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Identifying hazards – determining what may cause harm.
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Assessing risks – rating the risk of harm.
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Controlling risks – minimising or eliminating the risk of harm.
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Reviewing control measures – reviewing whether the controls actually minimised or eliminated the risk of harm.
The MCE has been developed by Plant Assessor based on these four measures. Any risk assessment conducted with Plant Assessor is thorough and effective and can assist you in minimising and eliminating safety issues with your plant that may cause serious injury or fatality to a worker and helps achieve compliance.
How does the Machinery Compliance Engine work?
The MCE works in three simple steps.
Step one
Step one requires you to choose what type of machine you are assessing. Plant Assessor has more than 120,000 pieces of plant and equipment to choose from in its database, ranging from workshop hand tools, trucks, mobile and fixed plant and equipment.
Step two
This involves answering some simple questions about your machine. You’ll be guided through the process of answering a series of questions using yes, no or n/a, allowing Plant Assessor to gain an understanding of the health of the machine and how safe and compliant it is. You can also take and catalogue photos and comment on findings as you go. After all the questions have been answered, the MCE jumps into action.
Step three
Step three is where the MCE does all the heavy lifting for you. It will firstly identify any safety hazards or risks that may be present and in consideration of any relevant legislation and standards. The risks that the MCE identifies will be based on the specific machine selected in the first step of the process.
The next component completed by the MCE is the assessment of the risk. Each specific safety hazard will be rated based on the risk matrix, which ranks the risks from low to critical based on the likelihood of harm occurring and how catastrophic the consequence of the risk is likely to be.
Once the risks have all been rated, Plant Assessor’s MCE will generate a risk management report which will recommend risk controls that can be implemented to reduce the likelihood of harm occurring and minimise the potential consequences. It is then up to you to take the necessary steps to implement these risk controls, reduce the possibility of harm occurring and ensure your machine is compliant.
From here, Plant Assessor’s suite of tools will continue to help you review, maintain, document and control machinery risks and compliance over the course of its life.
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Machinery operators can complete daily digital pre starts on their smartphone feeding a wealth of risk and reliability information to Plant Assessor’s rich reporting dashboards
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Keep records, store compliance documents, and share information with ease while creating an audit trail in case of a safety incident
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Schedule and manage machinery servicing and maintenance
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Receive alerts and notifications when assessments and services are due
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Generate type-specific safe operating procedures (SOPs)
What is the value of the Machinery Compliance Engine?
The value of completing Plant Assessor risk assessments powered by the MCE is great and varied, but perhaps one of the most significant is the time that it saves. By its very nature, a risk assessment is complex and time-consuming. Researching and understanding applicable legislation on top of building out thorough and consistent assessments for a wide and varied fleet of machinery takes copious amounts of time and manpower. Not to mention the vast safety legislation and machinery knowledge required to complete the task. Having an assessment tool in your pocket that can quickly identify potential hazards, set risk ratings and report on all required control measures needed for mitigation with reference to applicable federal and state legislation across a database of over 120,000 machines is a massive time saver. Plus, you gain a high level of value from having systemised and consistent assessments across the business, project and site.
Another benefit of the MCE is its ability to empower those with limited legislation knowledge to complete a thorough assessment. This means that you don’t have to spend valuable time training your teams on the nuances of different pieces of legislation or machinery, as they will already have the necessary tools to effectively carry out a thorough assessment with all data backed up to the cloud.
Finally, the significant value of completing Risk assessments powered by the MCE is being proactive in better managing machinery compliance that avoids costly accidents and injuries, keeping your people safe and helping save your business from incidents and litigation.
How does the Machinery Compliance Engine help me?
The MCE easily allows you to conduct a thorough risk assessment in a matter of minutes by simply selecting your specific piece of machinery and answering a few simple questions. The MCE will then identify any hazards related to your equipment, assess the hazards for their likelihood and potential consequences and generate a detailed risk management report which clearly outlines the control measures to be put in place to ensure your machinery and equipment is compliant. Simple!
To find out more about the MCE and how it is used in Plant Assessor’s risk assessments, contact the team for more information or a demonstration.
Disclaimer: This information is intended to provide general information on the subject matter. This is not intended as legal or expert advice for your specific situation. You should seek professional advice before acting or relying on the content of this information.