Scenario:
You’re out and about, and you come up on two workers working on a piece of equipment. You stop and engage the two workers on their energy isolation for their work. One of the workers operates the machine and has it locked out as part of his end-of-shift cleaning tasks. The other worker is a maintenance worker and he is replacing the 480V motor on the machine.
The Operator has all of his LOTO points locked out per the machine-specific procedure and has the keys to his locks in his pocket.
The maintenance employee has his personal lock on the electrical disconnect, along with the Operators lock.
Everything looks good, but do you go deeper or shake hands, say thank you, and go about your way?
If you walk away from this arrangement, you may be missing a very common error/shortcut in LOTO that is NOT allowed even by OSHA’s minimum electrical safety standards.