Special Hazards and Qualifications
2. Identifying Hazardous Tasks
2.1. Factors determining their identification
There are diverse factors that influence the classification of a task as hazardous. The combination of these factors means that the person responsible for carrying out the task decides when it is hazardous and, as such, that it requires special treatment.
These determining factors for identifying hazardous tasks are the following:
- Tasks typified as hazardous or involving special hazards according to current legislation, for example Appendix I of the Risk Prevention Services Regulations, Appendix II of Spanish Royal Decree 1627/1997 or by any other specific legislation, such as Spanish Royal Decree 614/2001.
- Risk assessments of activities, considering those tasks affected by hazards whose consequences may be extremely harmful.
- Accident rate statistics for the industry sector, focussing on the information on very serious or mortal accidents.
- Information provided by clients regarding the hazards at their facilities.
- Detection of uncontrolled hazards during the carrying out of jobs.
2.2. Identified hazardous tasks
A series of hazardous tasks has been identified on the basis of one or more of the aforementioned factors that are mainly related to electrical hazards, the risk of falling from a height, hazards derived from the mechanical handling of loads, the risk of being buried and welding. These tasks include:
- Working at Heights:
- Jobs at heights of over 6 metres.
- Jobs at heights of over 2 metres, if the use of a harness is necessary due to the lack of collective protection. For example, ladders, climbing supports / gantries, etc.
- Erection, dismantling or transformation of scaffolding: the person in charge must also necessarily be a “scaffolding supervisor”.
- Work involving electrical hazards: the person in charge must also be, depending on the case, Authorised or Qualified in accordance with Spanish Royal Decree 614/2001.
- Live work.
- Work in the vicinity of live parts.
- Access to service areas and enclosures of electrical material (power stations, sub-stations, transformation centres, control rooms, etc.).
- Movement or displacement of equipment or materials in the proximity of overhead or underground power lines or other installations.
- Jobs involving equipment for elevating loads.
- Jobs involving automotive equipment, including forklifts, when visibility is insufficient or this equipment coexists with workers on-site.
- The circulation of railways with simultaneous maintenance or repair work on the tracks or in their proximity.
- Jobs in confined spaces (in their case, including trenches, pits, cavities, etc.).
- Underground work in pits or galleries: Person in charge outside in continuous communication with the workers inside.
- Jobs in excavations, trenches, pits or earth-moving with the risk of burial. Jobs inside tunnels.
- Demolition work.
- Jobs at sites with a fire or explosion hazard, or jobs in explosive atmospheres.
- Welding, oxy-cutting, grinding, drilling jobs, etc. (any operation that generates heat, sparks, flames) in the proximity of inflammable liquids or gases or in vessels that contain or have contained liquefied gases.
- Exposure to hazardous agents:
- Chemical agents: depending on the case.
- Biological agents: depending on the case.
- Agents that are carcinogenic, mutagenic or toxic for reproduction.
There exists a list of specific tasks carried out the ISASTUR Group that have been identified as hazardous, which the Risk Prevention Department keeps up to date.
2.3. Identifying a new hazardous tasks
Besides the tasks already identified as hazardous and for which the pertinent working methods have already been made known (as explained in the following section), during the study of a job or during its carrying out the Works Supervisor or Manager may detect the existence of serious risks or hazards not controlled by means of the commonly planned preventive measures or simply tasks that are not commonplace or which are complex from the pint of view of Occupational Risk Prevention.
In such cases, the person responsible for carrying out these tasks may consider it advisable to classify them as hazardous and to proceed to include all the details that he considers appropriate in the corresponding Health and Safety Plan or in an Appendix drawn up to this end, with the aim of describing the working method to follow as best as possible.
