Safety Knights

We use Draegers to clear the space from outside, and then everyone entering the space wears a 4 gas monitor in their breathing zone. We. Over the personnel monitor first and that takes about half an hour to go over the basics. Everyone has one in front of them for the training. Then we go into the safety office and we demonstrate how to calibrate and document the meter. We require a paper record too even though we can and do download the data from our intelidox stations. Everyone calibrates their meter. The instructor has a meter that is old and broken to show everyone what a failure looks like at the end as long as all of the others pass.

When we cover the Draegers we cover the differences and the pump, tubing, filter and ball we use for cheking the different levels of the airspace.

All in all the lockout of our dryers and the confined space clearance and monitoring takes about 3 hours. Some groups catch on quicker, or have done the class before. We have a couple of videos we share of the space to help new employees understand how the work is done. The dryer chamber is as big as a garage, so movement is easy and we keep airflow on through the baghouse to keep the environment cool.

We use Industrial Scientific 5 gas meters. My staff gets training in how to use the meters upon initial hire. We also specifically train staff on how to use the monitors for confined space entry this is a separate training that is done with confined space and or confined space rescue. This is also done in coordination with SCBA training, so we cover our air monitors and their use in several different parts of our staff training. All in we probably spend a few hours going over monitors their use and how to read what they are telling you whether or not an alarm is going off. Everyone on my staff is assigned their own monitor and I track their alarms and review those alarms with the employee.

I include conducting a bump test, and lowering the probe into a nearby trench. Have them fill out the permit while I watch.