Safer By Design

To help achieve Zero Harm, it is vital to purchase, operate and maintain plant and equipment that does not place at risk the health and safety of employees, contractors or third parties.

Please click on buttons in right hand column to access tables that detail by machine type the design features that make mobile plant safer to operate and maintain. Two short videos provide more background information about the project.

'Safer by Design'

• Is voluntary guidance to help users of heavy mobile plant recognise and specify safer mobile plant.
• Will reduce injuries and ill-health attributable to poor mobile plant design.
• Has been developed by user companies and mobile plant manufacturers to identify key safety features on mobile plant that represent best practice.
• Covers loaders, bulldozers, excavators, dump-trucks, and mobile crushers and screens.

Operators who commit voluntarily to this evolving best practice guidance will be able to specify some or all of these safety features. Operators can compare their existing plant against the guidance.

'Safer by Design' is supportive of the European and International standards-making systems but recognises that these are necessarily cumbersome and produce standards that fall short of the 'state of the art' claimed to be represented by the CE mark. Research has shown that even though meeting international safety standards and the requirements of the EU Machinery Directive and, where applicable, the EU Outdoor Equipment Directive, a significant proportion of incidents involving mobile plant on mineral producing and processing sites are due to poor design. Safer by Design helps to address this design vacuum / time lag that exists between many manufacturers and users of heavy mobile plant.

Originally devised with ALSF-funded support, 'Safer by Design' enjoys wide-ranging and ever-expanding international tripartite support.