opinion BITA l Lifting standards
Invoking BITA’s own mission statement, BITA Technical Consultant, Bob Hine IEng MIMechE, provides a fascinating insiders’ insight into the safety standard developments arising from the EU Machinery Directive.
A
ll ShD readers must now be aware of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC, and the responsibility it places upon owners, operators
and users of fork lift trucks to ensure that their equipment is CE-marked. The CE mark provides visible proof of compliance with all of the applicable EU safety standards.
But what are the safety standards and how are they applied? If you’ll join me on a swift ‘behind-the-scenes’ trip, I’ll attempt to explain…
A New Approach to safety The Machinery Directive exemplifies the innovative New Approach’ to technical harmonisation defined by the European Council in 1985.
“The New Approach aims to maximise the free movement of goods by separating essential health and safety requirements from specific technical standards.”
The New Approach aims to maximise the free movement of goods by separating essential health and safety requirements (EHSRs) from the specific technical standards that must be achieved to meet those requirements.
In practical terms, the European Commission specifies the essential requirements in Directives such as the Machinery Directive, while European Standards Organisations (such as European Committee for Standardisation, CEN) draft the standards.
EHSRs are contained in Annex I of the Machinery Directive. And while the relevant EHSRs are legally binding, the application of specifications from
22 ShD February 2012
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harmonised standards (see box) is voluntary.
As the Directive explains, it’s the responsibility of manufacturers – or their ‘authorised representatives’, e.g. distributors or importers – to undertake a risk assessment in order to establish which EHSRs apply to specific products. Machinery must be “designed and constructed taking into account the results of the risk assessment” according to the General Principles of the Directive’s Annex I. The aim of this procedure is to eliminate the risk of accidents throughout the foreseeable use cases and lifetime of the machinery, including the phases of assembling and dismantling – where risks of accidents could also arise from foreseeable abnormal situations. In other cases, the instructions will need to draw the user's attention to ways (shown by experience) in which the machinery ought not to be used. As far as the Directive is concerned, harmonised standards provide technical specifications enabling machinery manufacturers to comply with the EHSRs.
“The specifications [of harmonised standards] provide a good indication of the state of the art at the time they are adopted…the level of safety afforded by the application of a harmonised standard provides a benchmark that must be taken into account by all manufacturers…”
Oh, Vienna…
Clearly there’s a need for harmonised standards within the EU to meet the needs of New Approach Directives. But certain harmonised standards are also developed within the framework of the
Good news for the industry This is good news for manufacturers of fork lift trucks and their associated components. Standards are becoming more straightforward and increasingly
Vienna Agreement, under which CEN co-operates with the International Standardisation Organisation (ISO). In this case, draft standards may be prepared by the Technical Committees (TCs) and Working Groups (WGs) of ISO; however, before they can be adopted as European harmonised standards, they are subject to CEN’s ‘enquiry and adoption procedures’ occurring in parallel with ISO’s procedures. Since 1996 a process has been underway to create a new ISO 3691 series of standards, covering safety requirements (and verification) for Industrial Trucks as defined in ISO 5053. Central to this project has been a new structure of International Standards for industrial trucks, which on one side lays down basic standards for all kinds of trucks, and on the other side establishes independent standards to cover the respective specific functions of industrial trucks, e.g. visibility, noise, vibration, electrical requirements, etc.
BITA is playing a pivotal role at CEN through its membership of the technical committee CEN/TC 150, of which I am chair. We at CEN/TC 150 are co-operating with our counterparts on ISO technical committee TC 110, in the creation of the new ISO 3691. Our task is to produce ‘European Norms’, or EN versions, of the ISO 3691 standards, such that they can be published in the Official Journal of the European Union and thereby achieve legal validity for use in the Machinery Directive.
opinion
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