Lock Out - Tag Out

Any interesting stories?

Doing my annual MSHA refresher.

Yeh, I watched a lifelong friend die of electrocution on an offshore flatform due to an improper LOTO and failure to verify before reaching into the gear. 480v, especially under a load, isn't very forgiving.

My first "real" job after graduating HS I could have very easily been killed due to an improper LOTO and taking my foreman's word for it. Job was to demo a light and I was very eager to show the boss man I could make a hand. Standing on a 14' step ladder in 4 inches of water with wet hands and feet on top of a steel hull and nowhere to tie off. Took the bosses word that he did the LOTO himself and there was nothing to worry about. He held the ladder while I dropped open the fixture and cut into 277v, BAM! Blew my new Klein D-2000 cutters out of my hand & knocked me off the ladder, fell 12' and landed on my back on the steel deck and was blind as a bat. It hurt. Big time lesson learned there.

Just 2 of MANY LOTO stories I could tell after 26 years of dealing with electricity in an industrial environment. Later after spending years as an Electrical Supervisor, I became a PTW/LOTO Coordinator and my team was responsible for every energy isolation on the project. Let's just say, I took my job seriously. There is no taking anyone's word for anything. I don't care if you get pizzed because "this takes too long for a quick little job, c'mon man". Nope, all isolation paperwork will be done correctly or I'm handing it back to you, it will be walked down in the field, and zero energy will be verified. The various types of locks and tags for lock boxes will be used correctly, or I will not sign off on the permit or isolation. I don't care if you get pizzed because you have to come all the way back over here. There is zero excuse for anyone to be hurt or killed because of an improper LOTO, and I drove this point home hard during the hundreds of PTW/LOTO training classes that I gave.

1985 - OSHA had an Lock-Out-Tag-Out regs back then, but back then there were a lot of facilities that could claim exemptions. Our facility used tag-out procedures, but locks were not used.

A plant operator went to the plant manger complaining I had a massive piece of rotating equipment tagged out, but the [censored] electrician was no-where to be found in the plant.

The Plant Manager told the operator to remove the tag and try to start the equipment. The operator rightly refused to remove the tag, so the plant manager went to the MCC, removed the tag himself, and initiated the start cycle. Only after it did not start did the manager send the operator our to check the equipment.

It did not start because I was on top, re-terminating the 480 volt motor. The Operator just about [censored] his pants when he got to the top of the ladder and saw me working on exposed connections. When the operator told me what happened, I came unglued. I had a 200 yard walk to build up a head of steam...I stormed into the plant managers office and grabbed his desk phone and called his boss on speaker phone.
I unloaded full bore. The manager never said a word, he knew he [censored] up. The director was at the plant within 10 minutes. Me made the manager walk him through it. The guy was trembling as he explained how he though I had gone to lunch, but he was honest about the entire thing.

Director sent him home, without pay, until they decide what to do. Director made an operator drive the manage home, since they guy had a company vehicle. It was a black and white firing offense.

After the manager left, the director asked if I wanted him fired. We walked out to the pickup and showed him the three 125 Amp fuses and the control xfm fuses from the MMC. There was some discussion about my never trusting any of the idiots at this plant, but I never expected the manager to be the one that tried to kill me.

They ended up letting him keep his job, but he got 2 weeks without pay and was required to walk the entire company through his is f-up at the next quarterly all-hands meeting. We also implemented padlocks about a month later.

Prior to LOTO protocols.

Work on a job converting warehouse space to office space. We had installed a dropped ceiling and 4x8 lay in fixtures. I had killed the power to flour strips in our area. Before the day of nocontact power testers, one learned to work everything as if was hot.

In this case, the warehouse strips were 277 volt and the lay ins were 120 volt out of a dedicated panel sub feed.
The warehouse strips were to remain in place but denergized. I was cutting to home run in the unistrut channel to cap off the 12 gage conductor.

Again working as if hot, I held conductor with my left hand, so it would not free fall. After placing a red Scotchlok between my teeth, I cut the conductor. As with every accident, at least 2 events must happen.

Here, the breaker had been thrown on and the #12 THHN remembered it was on a roll in previos life. It curled backwards, striking my left wrist just behind my glove. I later remembered thinking, if that wire is hot, its gonna hurt, don't fall off the ladder and grab the wire with your right hand.

Only my Kliens hit the deck, I didnt swallow the Scotchlok and yes, it hurt.

Oooh, close call there.

Witnessed something similar, 3 pipeline pumps side by side....... phenolic tags were wrong on the buckets in the MCC. Two motors were terminated on both ends, one was not. There was a hand doing the stress cones on the last motor in the field. Another team attempted to bump/check rotation/do uncoupled run tests on the two that were. I just happened to be walking by when this happened, and was listening on the radio. Attempted to bump motor A and nothing happened. They ran through basic troubleshooting and tried again, still nothing. I stopped the hand doing the stress cones and told him to get back until they figure out what is going on here. At that point I got involved and helped with the troubleshooting. Yep, sure as [censored] nobody did a continuity check to verify both ends correct before terminating much less energizing (standard procedure). They sent 4160v to the motor that man was working on, he just happened to have the exposed conductors separated and didn't have his hands in there at the time. I immediately stopped the job and got their foreman over there. He then immediately tried to throw his men under the buss to save his azz. We got into it big time, to the point that he was bowing up to me. Long story short, he was fired and the whole electrical crew had to re-train on the basics of terminating cables. Almost killed that man over something helpers know how to do.

LOTO training is one that I really drive home each year when we do our safety training on it. Since I’m still employed I don’t have any stories to share.

The #1 failure on a LOTO is people fail to test the equipment after they’ve locked it out. Not a statistic, a real world observation.

Those are some crazy stories fellas. In my first tour of duty at Raytheon I was a engineering technician supervisor and had to go through the training yearly where they showed some grizzly pictures of injuries sustained from electrical shock. Not something I would ever want to witness.

Yessr. You see men die, lose digits, suffer burns and other serious injuries because of ignorance or negligence and it will change the way you think about taking even minor short cuts. We write work procedures for a reason, to keep people safe on the job. These are step by step common sense procedures. It's not hard to follow those procedures and go home to your families in one piece. Have a question or need help, ask. Everybody starts somewhere, but I have personally witnessed too many times to count even experienced craftsmen and supervisors cut corners to "save time". No patience for that. It's really not hard to work safe today when it comes to energy isolation.

A lot of people think it’s just electricity but could also be other sources.

“Energy sources including electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, thermal, or other sources in machines and equipment can be hazardous to workers. During the servicing and maintenance of machines and equipment, the unexpected startup or release of stored energy can result in serious injury or death to workers.”

Correct. All energy sources as listed above, including stored energy and a few others. We deal with all of it. I only used electrical as a few examples.

As a green helper not knowing any better, I've also been soaked in a very high concentration of citric acid used for cleaning/flushing vessels. I pulled the transmitter overhead like I was told and never saw a work permit much less an Isolation Certificate. No JSA or tool box meeting to discuss the job task, just did what I was told. Another lesson learned. I strongly recommend against taking a bath in a citric acid cocktail, and I can tell you that getting in in your eyes is no joke. Had to flush for 30 minutes in my underwear in front of everybody before I could start seeing blurry again.

For any of you younger people in sales or sales management working in industrial process or manufacturing, I suggest adding relevant LOTO hardware to your PPE bag. It takes up very little space.

Why? If your going to be good in industrial process or manufacturing sales, you’re going to need to get your hands dirty from time to time. Bring your own LOTO. You’re also going to look prepared in front of your customers.

Just be sure that when you leave the site, remove and take your LOTO with you.

All this is not something I made up. Learned it from the old hands when I was a youngster.

That is a great look and mindset for sure (I'm not in sales), but I carried my own personal locks/hasps/tags for many years and used them often in the past. However today on most major projects your personal locks can no longer be used. You have to sign out & sign in personal locks and tags through the PTW/LOTO/Safety Dept.

This is the main reason your own personal locks are no longer allowed to be used. Too many times they are forgotten and have no proper identification between dayshift & nightshift, and going through the process that you have to go through before you can cut a lock is kind of a big deal. It has to go to the top, and managers never like that lol. If you get your energy isolation devices through the Dept and don't remove them when you are supposed to, then you can't close your permit. If you can't close your permit then you can't go home. If you go home without closing your permit, you are playing with fire and your job. I have been through this scenario many times. If I ever went back to land rigs or smaller projects again, I would carry my own personal LOTO equipment again.

At one limestone crusher I was a diesel mechanic at, the maintenance crews would send a roller out on a conveyer and stop it when it got to where they wanted to replace it. They then performed LOTO and walked out on the belt with their harness on a line and replaced the roller. There was a shift change, and the next foreman came on and there were no changeover notes. He cut the locks and started the belt as the guys were walking back. One of the guys took a ride to the surge pile and broke his arm. IMSHA issues two S&S fines, one on La Farge and one on the foreman.

Just because jobs are always rushed doesn’t mean you have to be in a hurry.
Most contractors understand that NOTHING brings a job site to a stop like a death or serious injury.

After the first time I stripped a live wire to hook up to my fire alarm panel that the sparky said he locked out and got the wrong breaker, I never take anyone’s word for it. Welded my strippers together and scared me bad. I’m lucky it wasn’t something more. Ultimately it was my fault for not putting a meter on the wires to confirm.
To this day even when I know the breaker is locked out I still strip and land one at a time.

Exactly why we write work procedures and have to hold people accountable, most of these issues could be avoided with some communication. I've seen many times dayshift/nightshift supervisors just don't like each other, so they don't communicate. Either written turn over notes, or supervisors coming in 30 minutes early/staying 30 minutes late to communicate activities. That is how it's typically done now on major projects. Normally we write turn over notes and have a 30 minute sit down like each other or not, because if you don't the manager will be talking to you about why...

Overall wearing Bubba with snuff drool on your chin, Mr Skinny Jeans wearing fancy pants with shiny rims......yall are going to communicate daily, or you're both going to be looking for work. Ego's & personality conflicts will not be an excuse for getting someone hurt or killed. I mention this because Lord I've seen it.

That’s not funny at all but I’m going to be be chuckling the whole evening because I can see that happening with nowhere else to go once you’re on that ride.

Yeah. That belt was about 3/4 mile long, and he took a 12-15’ fall. That foreman was fired, IMSHA fined him $50k and after his appeal he paid $20k. LaFarge paid over 100k in fines. That foreman ended up down the road at another plant, and never batted an eye.

What type of situation would a sales person be in to beed to be protected by a LOTO while on site doing sales people stuff?

None, but they are salesman. Always full of [censored]. It's what they do and some make a good living at it.

Have met very few that are legit and I've known a bunch.

Anybody can go to a training class and give advise these days.

There is no salesman alive in my industry that will ever be allowed to touch anything, like his attitude though.

Skinner is right for most of them. This reply is not self promotion but I carry LOTO and a well worn Fluke with me that’s been all over the world. Am on mgmt team and director level now. Still like picking up service jobs for fun and when I have time. Being in international sales for years, had to wear many hats. Nowadays in a leadership role I expect the youngsters to keep up with me. Happily try to teach them. Make lifelong friends with the old grizzled service guys. Learn from them.

To the young technical salesmen. Make dust or eat dust. Make yourself knowledgeable and the customers “go to” person because you know what the F you are talking about. Develop the kind of respect to tell the customer that what they want to do sometimes, will not work and be able to stand in front of a group of managers and engineers to explain why with authority.

This is how you win good business, lifetime customers, and leave your competitors filling out bid forms. This is what I’m working to develop in the next generation.

So much alphabet soup going on I don’t know which way is up.

I have never in my life met a salesman that knew WTF he was talking about.

I would love to see you do this in the Offshore O&G Industry. You will never get another phone call or email back.

You will never make it to a high level meeting with that attitude, been to a bunch of those meetings and nearly all salesmen were dismissed.

What you need to do is listen, and then respond with intelligence and humility understanding that you are trying to sell a product that you have never personally bet your life on.

I don't always look like some redneck wearing overalls, sometimes I wear office attire and interview salesmen in a corporate office environment, and I'm good at seeing through BS.

This happened at a company. Plant that I didn’t work except during outages. This particular plant had 4 old Elliot turbine/generators. We were working on 2 of the units and had all of our tags in place(this was before lockout). Well a couple of the plant operators were assigned to the electrical group. They were sent to clean the insulators on top of the transformers were the unit was tied to the switch yard. Long story short one of the guys got on an energized transformer. Luckily one of the regular electricians saw him before he touched anything. It was only 69,000 volts so it would have fried his a$$.

I’ve done just that with sand monitoring systems years ago. Nowadays I work with the a huge amount of industries. But I think through text I misstated. Yes absolutely you listen, take notes, and ask questions to make certain you understand. It’s a whole dialog. I just did not state the whole process very well.

Turkey, this is not a personal attack against you.

I just don't like salesman or politicians.

The reason for that is that most never keep their word.

I am familiar with sand monitoring systems. Not life threatening but very important to operation.

Goodnight Senor.

Neither do I

I’m from the hills of the Ozarks. For me keeping your word is sacred.

I believe we both have the same values. And I believe we have identified another trait of a good salesman

1) Three contractors sent to remove a wellhead in west Texas because the operator had bled down the pressure the day before. No one told them how to check for pressure because the lawyers say we’re not supposed to train contractors. They unbolt a flange with 3000psi and two guys get cut in half.

2) greenhorn operator on his first hitch offshore wants to impress the boss. It’s slow on night shift so he decides to pull a pump by himself with no permit and no LOTO. it only had 300 degree F glycol in the system. Luckily someone caught him before disaster.

3) tank farm operator at the chem plant locks out and bleeds an RV on a tank and when he gets back to the shack he meets the contractor that is supposed to pull the RV. “Yeah, right out there on Tank 2, it’s ready to go.” No reason to walk it down with them because he was just out there and knew it was safe. Only problem is the contractor goes to Tank 3 and unbolts an RV off of a live tank. It was really nasty stuff and would have killed half the county had it not been for the burst disc still in place.

4) mechanics working on an open flange with nothing but a pipe plug in the line. Someone miscues with the LOTO and starts the compressor. The 14 inch plug shoots out like a bullet and takes a guys head clean off.

Those are the ones I’m remembering on short notice. I’ve been a contractor that writes PSM documents and I got around to a lot of companies and a lot of sites. You’d be surprised at how many operators don’t take LOTO seriously, don’t take procedures seriously, and how many production superintendents always choose schedule over taking the time to be careful. Or maybe you wouldn’t.