Introduction to Fire Safety Management

A copy of the technical fi le must be held for at least
10 years.
15.31.1 Essential health and safety requirements
The essential health and safety requirements are detailed
in Schedule 3 to the regulations and cover a wide range
of issues including:
➤ Materials and products used to construct machinery
➤ Integral lighting
➤ Design of machinery to facilitate handling
➤ Controls, control systems and control devices
➤ Failure of power supplies and control circuits
➤ Software
➤ Protection against mechanical hazards
➤ Characteristics of guards and protection devices
➤ Protection against other hazards
➤ Maintenance
➤ Indicators (warning devices and instructions).
Certain categories of machines (agi-foodstuffs machinery,
portable machinery, etc.) have additional essential
health and safety requirements that must also be
satisfi ed.
Where machinery is manufactured in conformity with
published EU standards which have also been published
as identically worded national standards (transposed
harmonised standards) it is presumed that the machinery
will comply with the listed essential health and safety
requirements.
15.31.2 Declaration of conformity and CE marking
The declaration of conformity is the procedure whereby
the manufacturer declares that the item of machinery
complies with the essential health and safety requirements
and CE marking is used to indicate this on the
machinery.
The declaration should state:
➤ The business name and address of the manu -
facturer
➤ A description of the machinery (including make, type
and serial number)
➤ All relevant provisions that the machinery complies
with
➤ The name and address of the approved body and
the number of the certifi cate of approval where
applicable
➤ The name and address of the approved body to
which the technical fi le was sent or has drawn up a
certifi cate of adequacy
➤ The transposed harmonised standards used
Summary of key legal requirements
➤ The national standards and any technical specifi cations
used
➤ The person authorised to sign the declaration.
CE marking should be fi xed to machinery in a distinct,
legible and indelible manner and no other marking which
may be confused with the CE mark should be used on
machinery.
15.32 The Workplace (Health, Safety
and Welfare) Regulations 1992
(SI 3004)
These regulations defi ne a workplace as:
any premises or part of premises which are
not domestic premises and are made available
to any person as a place of work, and
includes any place within the premises to
which such a person has access while at
work and any room, lobby, corridor, staircase,
road or other means of access to or egress
from that place of work.
They apply to all workplaces (including temporary workplaces)
with the exception of docks, construction sites,
mines and quarries.
The regulations place duties on both employers
and persons who have control of workplaces (with the
exception of self-employed persons in respect of their
own work), to comply with the requirements and to ensure
that the workplace and any equipment, devices and
systems to which the regulations apply are maintained in
an effi cient state, in effi cient working order and in good
repair.
The requirements are summarised below under the
broad headings of health, safety and welfare.
Note: These headings are not used within the regulations
although they do provide a useful way of summarising
the principal requirements.
15.32.1 Health requirements – regulations 6 to 11
➤ Enclosed workplaces should have effective and suitable
provision for ventilation by a suffi cient quantity
of fresh or purifi ed air, including a visible or audible
warning device in the event of failure of the system
where appropriate for health or safety reasons
➤ The temperature in all workplaces during working
hours should be reasonable (at least 16ºC), and heating
or cooling methods which result in the escape of
injurious or offensive fumes, gas or vapour should
not be used
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