Permit Required Confined Spaces

Another Fatality OSHA Case file involving a Water Valve Pit (Hazard Information Bulletin regarding Asphyxiation Hazard in Pits: Potential Confined Space Problem) – a SINGLE entrant (the job foreman), a would-be-rescuer, and potentially another would-be-rescuer.  The water valve pit was 7 ft in diameter and 16 ft deep.  The vault contained a 12″ water main…...

We go all the way back to 1996 and OSHA issued a Hazard Information Bulletin regarding Asphyxiation Hazard in Pits: Potential Confined Space Problem.  Fast forward 23 years later and we have this:  At 2:23 p.m. on July 8, 2019, a worker employed by a utilities construction company was working in an underground vault. He…...

I will offer my 1-day PRCS training class for SAFETY PROFESSIONALS for FREE as long as a company steps up to sponsor the course. Sponsoring a course means you provide the training accommodations and lunch; SAFTENG provides the training and materials.  The sponsor gets 3-5 seats in the class in return for sponsoring the course…....

Why is this article posted in the Permit-Required Confined Space section of the website?  Because there seem to be a large number of safety professionals that are under the impression that ANY occupational hazard can turn a confined space into a Permit-Required Confined Space.  Noise is a recognized occupational hazard – I think we can…...

Last year I was attending some continuing education for my hazardous materials work.  The instructor was outstanding until he went on his tirade against Nitrogen (N2).  He was factually correct when he stated that N2 was a leading killer within confined spaces, but he went off the rails when he tried to convince me that…...

Attached is the written program for General Industry facilities which incorporate OSHA’s newer Confined Spaces in Construction requirements.  It is my recommendation that we UPDATE our written program that was based on the older 1910.146 standard to include all the improvements in 1926.1201 – .1213.  We should also understand that even though our facility may…...

Too many safety professionals still to this day think that to reclassify a Permit-Required Confined Space (PRCS) is simply to lock out all the energy sources that made the space a PRCS.  In August of last year, I posted a story where I asked the 30,000 members of the SAFTENG network if an enclosed palletizer…...

At 2:00 p.m. on May 20, 2014, Employee #1 was in a tank railcar confined space containing residual sweet crude oil without prior entry assessment and without wearing a harness with stand-by extraction equipment. While Employee #1 was shoveling crude oil inside a permit-required confined space tank railcar. Employee #1 was wearing a full-face supplied-air…...