Working with earthmoving equipment can be a dangerous task. Whether you're working with a scraper, an articulated truck, or other types of earthmoving equipment, you are most likely handling very heavy machinery in locations that are hard to reach and can be possible dangerous. Proper maintenance and repairs are vital to keep your equipment safe, and so is also proper handling of the machine. To further increase the safety surrounding your earthmoving equipment, there are a few simple things you can think about.
When refuelling
When refuelling your vehicle, make sure that everything is turned off. As you're out of the vehicle, you're not going to be able to stop it if it were to unexpectedly start moving, which could injure you severely where you're standing on the ground. The most important reason for this, however, is to minimise the risk of your machine igniting the fumes coming from possible fuel that has been spilt. It's also important to switch your vehicle off when performing repairs on it, no matter how small, as a vehicle that is running might have parts that are unexpectedly hot where you can burn yourself when you are performing the repairs.
When repairing
When having minor repairs done on your machine that are taking place at the work site rather than in a garage or at a mechanic's, you need to alert the other workers of what you're doing. Get the machine out of the way in a remote location on the work site to prevent people from driving into you, or in other ways disturb your repair work. The biggest danger about people not being aware that you're performing maintenance is that they might not know that you are out of the vehicle and therefore they might injure you by not taking any precautions of minding pedestrians when driving. You should also put up a sign behind your vehicle, well visible for other workers, stating that you're having repairs done.
After the workday
After the workday is over, you also need to think about how you're parking to make sure your machine is safe and not a danger to anybody. Turn it off and engage any control locks present. Lower any attachments and engage the breaks, so that if someone were to bump into it when you're not around, it won't go rolling off or have attachments crashing down. If you don't have an assigned parking space, you should also put up some type of sign behind the machine to state that it's a non working state.
Share18 January 2016
It is important to let people know how much energy they are using with normal tasks around the school so they can make some sensible decisions about how they use appliances. We want to make sure that everyone at the school understands the focus on our usage and the effect that we can have on the environment, as well as the larger decision that the school is making such as motion-sensitive lights and replacing our energy-hogging older devices with new lower power using appliances. This blog talks about how to improve the energy efficiency of schools and will be useful for school administrators.