look at "US CFR title 30" relating to guarding of conveyors-as long as you follow those rules you will not have any problems.

Any and all safety rules are there to protect us from our selves, and every situation is different so there is no one size fits all solution to conveyor belt guarding whether, it is in a stationary plant or a moving undegrouind mine face. ■

James

In some cases at our mining operation we use hinged guards or panels that are secured with heavy duty zip ties (plastic ties). They require a knife to be removed meeting the regulation (In Canada at least) that a tool is required for a guard to be removed. They allow for quick and easy access to the guarded area and can be easily replaced.

Regards,

Gary ■

James,

The proposed next Chairman of the AS1755 committee when it reconvenes this year is Paul Bryant. I have worked very closely with Paul for many years and he is a very practical and excellent person to debate these sort of issues with. I have been with him when compliance audits have been conducted and the issues you raise come up all the time. A lot of this has been created by the fact there was an unmistakenly underground coal bias to the last review.

My suggestion is you talk directly to Paul on these issues as I and many engineers have very strong opinions but frankly there does need to be some changes and modifications to the Standard so it reflects industry concerns re praticalities like you raise. Why I suggest this is because the current Duty of Care clauses in the OH&S legislation that we are now all working under creates enormous pressure on us to be fully compliant to AS1755 to protect our butts. If someone gets hurt Workcover don't argue the engineering practicalities, they argue compliance.

Paul owns a consultancy called Risk Free Workplace, he can be contacted easiest on his mobile 0418 275 299. He is the best person I have come across on these issues and the fact he is being nominated as the next chair is reflective of this.

All the best

Col Benjamin ■

James,

Overall I agree with you. A lot of what is in AS1755 was borrrowed from a guide book the US put out on conveyor safety some 10 years ago.

My reference to OH&S however is more about what our authorities are doing in this de-regulated regime. While the AS1755 Standard is a guidance document Workcover in NSW SA and WA now refer to it in their safety guidelines and unfortunately this starts making the Standard a compliance document. I don't know about Queensland but I have spoken to a lot of senior people in Statutory positions in the Coal Industry and they see compliance as a necessity for their own protection regardless of some of the problems. Some large companies are also now writing compliance to AS1755 into their OH&S documents. I also know of a company in SA after an accident that was threatened with closure of its plant unless it showed immediate good faith in respect to trying to comply to AS1755.

You are obviously having a good look at it at the moment. There are many issues that as engineers we can disagree with, the problem is it is hard to make changes from without and that is why more of us need to create a dialogue with those who are reviewing the Standard.

All the best

Col Benjamin ■

If you assess what needs to be done while the conveyor is energised in the area that you wish to guard, you may be able to change the way you design guards.

Is there really any benefit in being able to get up close and personal with today's skirt systems? If you can see (hear) what you need from a distance of a metre or more, then guards can be pulled back into a gated fence with a single interlock (if you trust interlocks that is!), or use the pull wire as an interlock across the gate.

This gives excellent access when the conveyor is de-energised and isolated, and excellent guarding when energised. The guard can be quite cheap too.

I'm not sure how you stop fence climbers.

Otherwise, guarding must be with us to prevent risk of injury and worse. They need to be light and easily replaceable, allowing access for any inspection, not getting in the way of maintenance operations and should consider all life of plant requirements. Use of remote relubrication, good instrumentation etc. reduces the need to get close too.

AS1755 is a good start, but doesn't cover all options. Real safety is in good engineering based on full assessment of all aspects of the machine being protected. Every case has different needs.

I still say that it costs about as much time and effort (and often less) for good safety as it would to provide some of the abysmal efforts that are all around us, especially on conveyors.

Did I note that guarding is one of my hobby horses.

Enough said

Steve ■