I have been tasked with putting together documents for contractors to maintain a consistent level of workmanship, component selection, and documentation requirements across sites around NZ. A large amount are already common practice, but putting it into a doc reinforces their importance.
So far, I have a few for each but would like some input for other standard work.
Mechanical
Load holding to be fit to all pneumatic and hydraulic actuators (with Engineering confirmation on exceptions). Labeling on isolator and actuators to state stored energy.,
All guards and fittings shall be secured with torx head center pin fasteners (unique fastener)
All fasteners on movable guards shall be retained on the guard or machine.
Safety barriers shall be greater than 1400mm high and less than 100mm to the ground (unless otherwise specified).
Pedestrian barriers between walkways and vehicle operation areas shall have impact barriers to 900mm with no gaps larger than 120 x 120 mm
Pedestrian gates shall open inward, be self closing, and prevent holding back (as far as practical)
Electrical/Safety Electrical
Wherever possible, Beckoff process components (with Engineer confirmation on exceptions)
Wherever possible, Pilz Safety components (with Engineer confirmation on exceptions)
All wiring outside cabinets shall be sheathed in conduit with no exposed wires
All components outside cabinets shall be secured with torx head center pin fasteners
Process Electrical: Identical components replaced shall be dated on the drawing. Alternative components replaced shall have the new part number and date.
Existing Safety Electrical: Identical components replaced shall be dated on the drawing. Alternative components replaced shall have safety calculations BEFORE starting work and reviewed by the site engineer on completion.
New Safety Electrical: BEFORE starting work, new circuits shall have a Safety Requirements Specification, wiring diagram and safety calculations complete to meet the Risk Assessment Performance Level and Safety Category. Documents to be reviewed by the project engineer before starting work
New Safety Electrical: New Circuits shall have a safety validation complete and a visual confirmation by the Project Engineer to confirm the Safety Requirements Specifications are met.
I look forward to any recommendations or changes; I will be circulating the document within the engineering team and site managers to get their feedback too.
Reading the lists, these all look like items a project engineer should be responsible for specifying during their process of engaging the contractors such as completing an FMEA, doing validation and having independent inspector sign off.
IMO cherry picking requirements from published standards is a risky move, and the project engineer should be quoting compliance with the applicable standard(s) for the job the contractor is being asked to complete. Sure, you can write an in-house document for the engineering team, listing company preferred brands of component or types of fixings if that helps standardise the process for the engineering team.
For H&S purposes I would be looking at the overall process, if you want to document it.
Have your engineers quoted published standards the job must be completed against?.
Do the contractors have an H&S policy and (where applicable) use licenced staff (eg electrician licence)
Is there an engineering, operational and H&S review before the job starts, during stages of the job and with each contractor?
On completion are there engineering, operational and H&S reviews and signoffs (eg FMEA, validation, drawings update, inspections - electrical / HSNO have been done, staff work instructions and training completed, H&S risk register updated...things like that
For every project, the project engineer specifies the standards to be met, however, we commonly require the project engineer to state these specifics to meet the company standards. On projects where these have not been stated, such as small jobs or sites that engaged a local contractor, clauses are often missed as the contractor decides they are not needed because they normally don't do it.
For the mechanical points, we want to set the minimum standard for our company, regardless of what the risk assessment states. They are all above what is required by the standards, which we specify must be met in the contract too. They are also relevant to incidents and near-misses that we recognized could have been prevented by implementing these controls.
For the electrical, again, they are all above what is required by the standards. They are more workmanship-related than standards-related.
For the safety electrical, the specific standards are stated in the contract, however, we have had instances where they have completed the work, provided the wiring diagram, and sent through the safety documentation about a week later, which doesn't meet the required Performance Level and Safety Cat Rating. We are trying to get that sorted before they start so we can reduce the machines being down for multiple fixes.
The EHS team have their change management documents that cover off the completion side, this is to tackle the common engineering faults and issues before they occur.
I used to work as a project engineer before I got into H&S. It was a while ago but we also used to write project standards, part of which included referencing the required legislative standards and added 'and any other relevant national or regional standards'. It is great that you are thinking of setting company standards over and above the relevant legislative standards. Your mechanical notes do seem to reflect some of the ASNZS 4024 1801 standard though. FYI the ASNZS 4024 1204 is the elctrical equivalent. We did specify electrical cabinet rating depending on the environment, for example, IP65 for dusty environments however, I think that may now be covered in more recent standards but am not sure. I am also 99% sure there are standards around sheathing of wiring as well. Another thing we used to specify was labelling of all wiring and breakers etc in electrical cabinets. Fault finding in complex machinery where the wiring isn't labeled is definately not fun speaking from experience, and is extremely time consuming.
My suggestion would be to look what the different applicable standards are over and above the legislated standards so that you are not doubling up and note them in your company standards as well, as not all standards are incorporated into law i.e. if you don't specify them then the contractor/supplier does not need to comply with them. I would also specify that 'sign off by a registered engineer confirming compliance to the relevant standards and legislation is required' at various stages possibly depending on the size of the job. You may or may not want to follow the PS1 to PS4 process with smaller jobs.
I don't know if that was helpful or not, you probably already have a lot of this in your projects standards anyway but thought I would mention.
It also sounds like some contractors may need to be held to account more for their works and I don't see any reason why the local contractors on the smaller jobs shouldn't be held to the same project standards. I know it is always a battle with the smaller contractors who are not used to working with project standards but as you have noted, safety suffers if they don't meet the standards you require.
Sounds like you have a lot of good stuff in place already and looking to fill in the gaps.
So as these are all variances particular to your organisation and they are over and above those required in regulation / standards, then I'd start with the name of the Regulation/Standard and have the engineers list the variances required against it. This will build you a register of company specific requirements per standard. If a standard is updated or an in incident occurs then you can review/update the register of variances accordingly.
The Management of Change procedure usually starts when a project makes it off the wish list, (so all stakeholders have an initial chance for input), so you could include an ENG/HS check that a list of variances per standard has been given to the contractors or if the job refers to a standard not on the register, that a review of the standard and a listing of variances is added to the register as a prerequisite of talking to contractors.
Do let us know what feedback you got from the engineers and other managers.