Safety signature legal/ liability implications

[dusawarr]

Hello,

Within my company we have had a lot of discussion about the presence/ absence of a legal liability of people removing the signing safety signatures on equipment.

Background.
We have procedures for a controller which state we have to re-test all safety's on the system and fill out the original check list( or update) and then 2 people have to sign off.

The issue.
We have some people who have regenerated the signature without the documentation. The push back is that we don't have any external documentation that the documentation needs to be followed.

Does anyone have any examples or regulations they have seen or cases which display the liabilities in not maintaining a chain of custody for safety signatures?

 

[Jeev]

This is complex - Start by looking at what's enforced by the state or federal regulatory body that's relevant to your site.

For example, in Queensland (Australia), we have regulatory bodies like WorkSafe and the Electrical Safety Office. These are organisations who ensure compliance with legal requirements like the Fair Work Act. WorkSafe makes specific reference to AS4024 (Safety Of Machinery) meaning the adoption of AS4024 forms part of the legislative framework rather than "Just a guide on how to use a safety contactor".

According to WorkSafe and AS4024, if you were to make a change to the system you would need to update one/many/all of the Risk Assessment (Iterative process), Safety Requirement Specification, Software Safety Requirement Specification, Safety Verification Report and Safety Validation Report.

For you guys over the pacific, you would likely be following ISO13849, but I have no idea if it's regulated or legislated for you in the workplace - One of the locals will need to chime in here.

That documentation, testing and approval process exists for a reason. It's so changes can't result in property/process damage, a near miss, injury or death. These are all events you may need to prove you were not responsible for if something goes sideways.

 

[mk42]

The push back is that we don't have any external documentation that the documentation needs to be followed.

The push back is that you don't have rules saying they need to follow the rules?! You'd then need rules to say you have to follow the rules saying you need to follow the rules, etc, and thar be dragons.... (sarcasm, I'm assuming you mean no law says you need to do the right thing)


In the US, safety regulation is kinda the wild west. There's no rules, and generally speaking, nobody cares until somebody gets hurt. There are two pro-active strategies for dealing with a lawsuit: 1) have so much documentation that you can show you did everything reasonable to prevent accidents 2) have so little documentation that they can't show you did anything wrong. It sounds like the company wants the former and a few employees want the latter. They sound like liabilities, of the legal kind. To me, this is the kind of thing that requires HR involvement ASAP.