Okaloosa County BOCC — June 2, 2015 — County safety manual: permit-required confined space program

Okaloosa County Safety Manual Revision: 03-04-2008 PERMIT REQUIRED CONFINED SPACE PROGRAM 1. PURPOSE The purpose of this policy is to establish mandatory practices and procedures for entry and working in confined space areas. All employees subject to work around confined spaces must understand the seriousness and potential hazards that confined spaces present, up to and including fatal. Employees must read and understand this policy before any work can be performed around or within confined spaces. 2. DEFINITIONS The following words and terms shall have the following meaning, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise. 2.1. Acceptable Entry Conditions means those conditions that must exist in a permit space to allow entry and to ensure that employees involved with a permit-required confined space entry can safely enter into and work within the space. 2.2. Attendant means an individual with no other duties except assigned to remain immediately outside the entrance to the confined space and who may render assistance as needed to employees inside the space. 2.3. Authorized Entrant means an employee who is authorized by the employer to enter a permit space. 2.4. Blanking Or Blinding means the absolute closure of a pipe, line or duct by the fastening of a solid plate (such as a spectacle blind or a skillet blind) that completely covers the bore and that is capable of withstanding the maximum pressure of the pipe, line, or duct with no leakage beyond the plate. 2.5. Confined Space means any space not intended for continuous employee occupancy, having a limited means of egress, and which is also large enough and so configured that an employee can bodily enter and perform assigned work. 2.6. Engulfment means the surrounding and effective capture of a person by finely divided (flammable) solid substance that can be aspirated to cause death by filling or plugging the respiratory system or that can exert enough force on the body to cause death by strangulation, constriction, or crushing. 2.7. Entrant means any employee who enters a confined space. 37  Okaloosa County Safety Manual Revision: 03-04-2008 2.8. Entry means the action by which any part of a person passing through an opening into a permit required confined space. Entry includes subsequent work activities in that space and is considered to have occurred as soon as any part of the entrant's body breaks the plane of an opening into the space. 2.9. Entry Permit means a written or printed document that is provided by the employer to allow and control entry into a permit space. 2.10. Entry Supervisor means the person (such as the superintendent, foreman, or crew chief) responsible for determining if acceptable entry conditions are present at a permit space where entry is planned, for authorizing entry and overseeing entry operations, and for terminating entry as required by this policy. Note: an entry supervisor also may serve as an attendant or as an authorized entrant, as long as that person is trained and equipped as required by this policy for each role he or she fills. Also, the duties of entry supervisor may be passed from one individual to another during the course of an entry operation. 2.11.