Safety Matters: Confined Space Entry Training on Demand

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Ensuring employees’ occupational health and safety should be a top priority for every business out there. While the safety concerns of some industries merely touch on issues like slippery floors and emergency exits, other industries need a complex safety infrastructure in order to be able to execute their operations without endangering the lives of their workers.

Oftentimes, the cause of accident and fatality is not just the risky nature of the job in question, but also a lack of proper training and education that would enable workers to better evaluate the dangers certain situations involve. Therefore, it is essential that businesses operating in high-risk industries place great emphasis on developing a strong system for safety training and rescue protocols.

Confined spaces carry many more dangers than simply posing restrictions to workers’ movements. Therefore, a confined space may only be entered by someone who received the appropriate training for this kind of work. If entry to sewers, pipes, ducts, silos, chimneys, wells, fuel tanks, storage bins, vaults, and other similar places may occur as part of the work your business does, here’s what you need to know about confined space entry training.

What are confined spaces?

As we just suggested with our examples, confined spaces are partially or entirely enclosed spaces with limited entry and exit points that were not designed for humans to occupy them. A confined space is big enough for one person to enter and do the necessary work, but it is not suitable for prolonged occupancy.

While not every confined space may require special permits to enter, they all pose certain risks. The OSHA differentiates permit-required confined spaces based on a few characteristics, and, needless to say, these require special attention.

According to their standards, permit-required confined spaces may contain a hazardous atmosphere or materials, sloping walls or floors that pose dangers of entrapment or asphyxiation, some sort of material that can engulf the worker or other hazards that can potentially hurt the entrant, such as exposed wires or machinery.

What does confined space entry training involve?

A confined space training course is a short course that will take a couple of days to complete at most. Its goal is appropriately preparing workers for the situations entry to confined spaces can bring forth. A confined space training course will tackle a variety of areas and provide both theoretical as well as practical education. Topics such as the following will be covered:

· Identifying what qualifies as a confined space

Workers need to know how to identify spaces that may qualify as confined spaces or permit-required confined spaces so that only qualified personnel attempt entry to these spaces.

· Identifying and managing hazards

The course will teach not only the general dangers of confined space entry but also the skill of identifying whether there are additional hazards present. Workers that are improperly trained, for instance, may not realize airborne hazards before it’s too late. A confined space entry course will also teach workers how to conduct atmospheric testing and other practical skills. Besides identifying, the skill of reacting to hazards will also be covered.

· Use and maintenance of safety equipment

Safety equipment plays a crucial role in confined space entry, and only the workers themselves can ensure that their equipment fits well and works well. Confined space entry courses will also cover the use and maintenance of personal safety equipment, such as those of safety harnesses. There are numerous types of safety harnesses and only particular ones are suitable for confined space entry. The way safety equipment is stored must also be given some thought to.

· Emergency and rescue procedures

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Many of the deaths associated with work in confined spaces could have been avoided if employees would have been appropriately trained for rescue procedures. According to case studies, a lack of a solid rescue procedure often puts rescuing parties in danger. Not only is reacting fast important; it’s also important that the person attempting rescue knows how to follow rescue procedures and does not create additional danger due to a lack of acquaintance with confined space conditions. Not just the employee entering the hazardous space needs to be educated, but the entire team that works around the confined space in question.

Confined space training is not just a question of worker safety, but it’s also a question of compliance, so no business that works in industries where the hazard of confined spaces exists can afford to skip it. A good confined space course will equip workers not only to identify hazardous confined spaces and be appropriately cautious when entering them but also to react promptly to dangers and minimize the risks they and their colleagues are exposed to.