7 Tips To Pump Up Your Power Plant Safety

Power plants have many regulations to live up to. However, bolstering power plant safety isn’t just about avoiding fines and improving your bottom line. Working in power plants can be dangerous for employees. A solid slate of safety precautions doesn’t just improve the efficiency of the plant, but it also empowers your employees to do their jobs without the threat of avoidable hazards.

Simple, common-sense precautions can greatly reduce the risk to your employees, as well as the threat of lost time or the costly waste of resources that can result from accidents. Consequently, keeping your power plant safe increases both the productivity of your business and the welfare of your workers.

7 Tips To Pump Up Your Power Plant Safety

Below, we’ve included some common ways to increase safety in power plants. These power plant safety topics will certainly get you started but remember– safety involves both learning and taking action. Educate your workers and your team about hazards, and implement programs and systems to improve the safety of your power plant.

1.  Ensure Adequate Safety Equipment

Safety equipment is the most basic precaution you must provide your workers. In addition, asking workers to perform tasks without adequate protection isn’t just risky. It’s often illegal.

Check those supplies of gloves, tinted glasses, hard hats, and other safety equipment. The last thing you want is a worker not using the proper equipment because there was none available. Since this protective equipment is often housed in many locations where workers need it, some supplies may be understocked.

Create systems for protective equipment so that what is on hand is regularly checked and reported. Therefore, knowing where supplies are needed is the first step to ensuring that your workers always have the protection they need.

2. Regularly Inspect Safety Equipment

All safety equipment in the plant must be inspected regularly in rotation. Don’t overlook anything. Workplace accidents at a power plant can be incredibly dangerous and costly. It’s worth the time to ensure that all safety precautions are working as intended at all times.

Create a regular schedule and allot resources. This way, your maintenance department can methodically verify the function of all safety equipment in the plant. This should be a priority and always ongoing. A breakdown in a critical system will be far less costly and damaging to operations if all safety equipment is performing as it should.

3. Create More Accessible Exits

Unfortunately, accidents do sometimes occur. However, if your safety programs work as intended, the damage to your plant’s team or productivity should be limited. During an emergency, one of the most important safety measures is always going to be giving workers a way to escape from harm’s way.

Multiple exits to any potentially hazardous area must be clearly marked. Additionally, ensure the entire team is well-educated about escape protocols. Any escape route should be hazard-free, even in the event of a total systems collapse. The last thing you want is a worker’s escape route to be obstructed because of an air supply failure or furnace pulsation. 

4. Educate, Educate, Educate.

Every worker in your power plant must know every step of the safety protocol, from top to bottom. All the safety precautions in the world mean little if your team doesn’t know how to properly utilize them, or if they’re even there.

Safety culture starts at the top. If your management team makes safety a priority and shows it by example, the whole team will work safer. Regular education and dialogue with your team about safety accomplish two things. It teaches them how to work more safely. And it teaches you about hazards you may not have noticed.

5. Stay Cybersecure

Technological solutions allow your plant to work more efficiently and safely. However, precautions must be taken, so you know that strength won’t become a weakness. Cybercriminals can do a lot of damage to your operations from even a small security breach. One breach could compromise the safety of the plant.

Protect your digital systems with thorough cybersecurity measures. A safe plant must be a secure plant, especially if you’ve automated procedures for a safer working environment.

6. Regularly Train for Equipment Safety

No matter how often your team uses equipment in the plant, they could benefit from safety training. Without proper, regular safety training, your workers will develop bad habits over time. For example, large equipment is costly and potentially very dangerous if misused. When new workers start, they’ll often pick up these bad habits from existing workers.

Regular and thorough equipment training is important to show your team the proper procedures with plant equipment. Additionally, show them the importance of attention to detail. Repeated safety training may feel redundant to your veterans. However, the best way to operate a machine perfectly every time is to practice the perfect way of operating it repeatedly.

7. Automate Safety and Compliance

The best safety program is one that has a rigid schedule to ensure all measures are followed. The reality is that a plant’s workers are the ones who ensure safety every day. However, ensure safety is checked and verified daily by automating safety and compliance checks.

Regulation compliance is often complex in a power plant. But automation can simplify needs down to a checklist and regular tasks. This can eliminate human error from safety planning, and it just makes life easier on your team. The software keeps compliance and safety tasks straight so they don’t have to.

At GoCanvas, we help streamline the safety process in your plant with automated safety and compliance plans. With our safety and compliance software, you’ll know that all the precautions in your plant are up-to-date. In addition, you’ll have easily available documentation of every inspection, inventory, or test. If anything goes wrong, you’ll have documentation on that as well. You will know exactly where retraining or new equipment is needed.

Undoubtedly, safety and compliance aren’t just good business practices in a power plant. They’re an essential part of the business. Keep your plant running smoothly and your workers safe and compliant by transforming your plant into a safer workplace today.