MYP Design Workshop Safety and Risk Assessment Notes

Hazard and Risk Are Two Different Words

1. A hazard is anything with the potential to cause harm: a spinning blade, a solvent, a trailing extension lead.
2. Risk is the chance that the hazard actually hurts someone, combined with how badly it would hurt them.
3. A bandsaw blade is a severe hazard all day long, but with the guard lowered to just above the work and a push stick in your hand the risk is small.
4. Controls work in a fixed order: remove the hazard, swap it for something safer, guard it, change the way people work, and only then reach for protective equipment.
5. So the first question is whether the job can be done a different way, such as buying 18 mm MDF cut to size rather than ripping full sheets yourself.
6. Tidiness is a control too, since most workshop falls involve an offcut on the floor or a lead stretched across a walkway.

PPE Is the Last Line of Defence, Not the First

1. Personal protective equipment protects one person from a hazard that is still fully present, which is why it sits at the bottom of the order of controls.
2. Safety glasses go on for anything that throws particles: drilling, grinding, chiselling, hammering and brazing.
3. A full face shield covers more than glasses do, so it is what you wear at the grinder or the lathe where a fragment can come off at speed.
4. Ear defenders belong near planers, routers and thicknessers, since noise above about 85 decibels damages hearing permanently and painlessly.
5. A disposable dust mask only works if it seals against your skin, so straps over the ears or a gap at the chin make it decoration.
6. Leather apron and gauntlets are for hot work, and gloves are banned near rotating machinery because a glove that snags takes your hand with it.
7. Tie long hair back, tuck in a lanyard, roll up loose sleeves and take off rings before you switch anything on.

Guards, Emergency Stops and Isolation

1. A guard puts a physical barrier between your body and the cutting part, and an interlocked guard goes further by cutting the power the moment it is opened.
2. Never run a machine with a guard removed or propped open, and hand the job to a technician if the guard needs adjusting.
3. An emergency stop is a large red mushroom head on a yellow plate, big enough to hit with a palm or an elbow without aiming at it.
   1. It latches in once pressed, so the machine cannot restart until someone deliberately twists the button back out.
4. Find the stop button and the workshop isolation switch before you start the machine, not while something is going wrong.
5. Work goes in a machine vice or under a clamp, because a drill that grabs a hand held piece of sheet metal spins it into a blade.
6. Isolate the machine at the wall before changing a blade, a bit or a belt, and never work alone in a workshop on powered equipment.

Dust, Fumes and Hot Work Do Their Damage Quietly

1. Wood dust harms you over years rather than seconds, and hardwood dust is classed as a cause of cancer of the nose and sinuses.
2. MDF dust is especially fine, so it hangs in the air long after the sanding stops and reaches deep into the lungs.
3. Run the extraction at the machine, and clear up with a vacuum rather than a brush or an air line, both of which throw the fine dust straight back into the air.
4. Solder flux, acrylic cement, spray paint and overheated polymer all give off fumes, so they belong under extraction or in a spray booth with the door open.
5. Hot work is deceptive because a brazed steel rod at 400 degrees Celsius looks exactly like a cold one, so use tongs, a heatproof mat and a marked cooling area.
6. Keep solvents and rags away from any hot work, and know where the extinguisher, the fire blanket and the nearest exit are before you light anything.

Writing a Risk Assessment: Hazard, Who, Likelihood, Control

1. A risk assessment is written before the practical work starts, with one row for each hazard in the job you are about to do.
2. Name the hazard precisely, so "rotating 6 mm drill bit" rather than "the pillar drill", because a machine has several separate hazards.
3. List everyone at risk, which usually includes you, the person at the next bench and the technician who clears up afterwards.
4. Score how likely the harm is and how severe it would be, often 1 to 5 each, then multiply the two to get a risk rating you can compare across rows.
5. Write controls that someone could actually follow: "guard down to 5 mm above the work, push stick used, hands never closer than 100 mm to the blade" beats "take care".
6. Score the risk again with the controls in place, and if the number has not dropped then the control is not doing anything.

Keep It in the Design Folder and Keep It Current

1. The risk assessment lives in your design folder next to the plan for making, because the two describe the same set of operations.
2. Date it, and add a new row whenever your plan changes, since deciding to braze a joint introduces new hazards.
3. Have your teacher check it before you use any equipment you have not used before, and note that check on the sheet.
4. For criterion C it is evidence that the making was planned rather than improvised, which is exactly what the criterion asks you to show.
5. Record near misses and what you changed afterwards.
6. A couple of photographs showing the guard down and the glasses on prove that the controls were used and not just written.