What this check covers

This free check tests how reliably a workplace identifies, isolates, secures and verifies hazardous energy before anyone works on equipment. Ten questions cover identifying every energy source on serviced equipment, electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, thermal, gravity and stored; isolation points that are accessible and matched to the right equipment; a written procedure for shutdown, isolation, lock placement, stored-energy control and restart; each exposed person controlling their own lock; verification of a zero-energy or safe state before work starts; dissipating or restraining gravity, pressure, heat, capacitors and springs; protecting group and contractor work through handovers; controlled testing and temporary re-energisation; removal of another person’s lock as a tightly controlled exception; and restoring guards, removing tools and accounting for people before restart. Six of the ten are safety-critical. The check is not tied to a single regulation; it rests on the employer’s duty under section 8 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act to provide safe systems of work, and on the machinery regulations that apply to the equipment concerned. It is aimed at maintenance managers, plant engineers and supervisors in any operation that services its own machinery. Switching off is not the same as isolating, and the questions are built around that difference.