Establishing Operating Conditions: Safety Engineering Report

This report delves into the significance of safety engineering within the context of air conditioning systems, focusing on the application of Work Health and Safety (WHS) regulations and effective risk management strategies. The report analyzes a case study involving a malfunctioning air conditioning system and its impact on workplace health, highlighting the legal obligations of employers and the importance of regular maintenance. It outlines the merits of regular air conditioning service, emphasizing economic benefits and improved worker health. Furthermore, the report explores various control measures, including elimination, substitution, isolation, engineering controls, and administrative controls, to mitigate workplace risks. The case study involving the Burbs Municipal Council provides practical examples of safety improvements, demonstrating the importance of proactive measures to ensure a safe and healthy work environment.

Running Head: Safety Engineering
UNIVERSITY AFFILIATION
FACULTY OR DEPARTMENT
UEENEEJ104A
ESTABLISH THE BASIC OPERATING CONDITIONS OF AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEMS
STUDENT NAME
STUDENT REGISTRATION NUMBER
PROFESSOR (TUTOR)
DATE OF SUBMISSION
1

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QUESTION 1
An air conditioning system is quite important for any building especially those set up in the
urban and remote areas. The system takes up the hot air from a room filters it and adjusts the
room temperature as set in the automatic controller. It cools, heats, or humidifies the air before
circulating it in the building. The air conditioner system determines the air that the workers
breathe. There are several health implications associated with poor air conditioning systems.
Some of the health issues caused by poor ventilation or room conditioning are lung and
respiratory tract problems, virus and bacteria reactions, and allergic reactions. In such a setup,
the workers who are likely to suffer from such ailments are staff members in an organization,
building maintenance workers and other support staff. Every organization desires acoustic
comfort, thermal comfort and humidity. Air conditioning is quite sunect to the building
occupants as
In this case study, the organization seems to have issues with the current air conditioning system.
The system broke down and the staff members are suffering the effects of the heat wave being
experienced in the state. Unfortunately, the property manager has not fixed the system. The code
of practice on how to manage the work health and safety risks is an approved code of practice
under section 274 of the WHS act. The act or code of practice applies to anyone who has a duty
of care in the circumstances described by the code. The code of practice require that the duty
holders look into all the risks that are associated with work to ensure safety and good health of
workers in a given place. The organization’s air conditioner expert can use the Work Health and
Safety policy to convince the building owners to repair the system. The management at the
company aims at preventing any forms of ailment or injury occurring at the workplace. The
WHS act states that an employer, controller or self-employed persons are obliged to take care of

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their employees. The act requires the employees to equally take care of themselves at work. The
health and safety representatives conduct routine checks in buildings to ensure that each
organization complies with the health and safety act. They perform risk assessments in the act
but they are mandated in the regulation for certain high-risk work.
 The failure to abide by the health and safety duties may result in injunctions, remedial
action and legal enforceable undertakings. These actions may be used to persuade the
property owners to resolve the air conditioning issue in the office. To avoid such legal
penalties, the building managers may seek to resolve the problem at hand.
 The breach of WHS regulations is admissible in court as the regulations have a legal
binding. An inspector may use a given approved code of practice when issuing an
improvement or prohibition notice.
QUESTION 2
Merits of regular air-conditioning service.
1. Economic benefit: regular air-conditioning service ensures that the air conditioning
system is checked periodically by an expert to ensure that the system is running
effectively. According to statistics, those organizations that only have their ACs checked
when an issue arises, tend to incur very heavy costs repairing and lose out on the system’s
efficiency. Regular services maintain up to 95 percent of the system’s efficiency.
2. As a result, the probability of the Air Conditioning system breaking down at unlikely
times, for instance, when the state is experiencing heat waves, is reduced greatly.

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3. Regular servicing elongates the life span of the system. This reduces the cost that would
be incurred if the system needed a major repair or suddenly broke down and needed to be
replaced.
4. An efficiently running AC does not consume as much power as the faulty ones. The
regular servicing ensures that the condensing unit coils and the evaporator coils are
thoroughly cleaned up.
5. It guarantees the workers safety and good health. Statistics have shown that the huge
number of sick leaves and poor productivity levels of workers can be greatly attributed to
the poor ventilation and air conditioning of their workplaces.
QUESTION 3
Combination of controls usable whenever a single control measure is not sufficient.
In every workplace, the WHS regulation team is supposed to consider all the risks that may
affect the workers. A risk management portfolio is generated as a guiding document in risk
identification, monitoring, and management tool. These controls are categorized in levels from
the most effective to the least effective. The sum total of the usage of the controls ensures that
the workplace as well as the employees are quite safe. The controls are obtained from the safe
work Australia fact sheet which analyses the risks that majorly occurs in the busy industrial work
environments as well as the assessments taken. The risk assessments are followed by
implementing and reviewing control measures.
To control the risks that may occur in the workplace, the WHS regulation team should,
(i) Eliminate the risk causing agent, for instance, an organization could do away with a
dangerous machine.
(ii) Substitute the hazard with a safer alternative such that one replaces the machine with
a safer version of the same machine.

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(iii) Isolate the risk agent from anyone who could be harmed, for instance, by keeping the
machine in a closed room and operate it remotely.
(iv) To use engineering controls that reduce the risk such as attaching guards to the
machine to protect users.
(v) To use administrative controls to reduce the risk, for instance, train workers how to
use the machine safely as well as ensure that the workers always don personal
protective equipment. Some of the recommended PPE are gloves, goggles, and boots.
It is considered as the last line of defense.
CASE STUDY I
Every organization at its inception writes down a health and safety procedure document. The
document is prepared and shared with the workers to ensure they are aware on the practices that
are installed to have safety at the workplace. The safety manager in the Burbs Municipal Council
conducts training workshops each Friday to inform the staff about the safety practices.
Workshop I: Parks and Gardens Branch
The team at this branch is involved in cleaning a block of 8 toilets at the council’s park. The
process requires that the workers load the truck with the compressor and pressure hose. The
equipment are loaded alongside the cleaning chemicals and materials. The team cleans the toilet
and later puts back the equipment on the truck before proceeding to clean the next toilet block in
a different park. The safety manger was informed that the cleaning procedure was quite hectic
and a lot of time was being wasted doing the cleaning. Some of the health implications with
regards to the cleaning procedure in place are:
(i) A faulty truck could cause accidents and injure the workers while travelling from one
park to another. A faulty compressor or pressure hose could cause burns or injuries
when exposed to flammable conditions.
(ii) The workers are forced to load and unload the compressor and pressure hose while
cleaning each toilet block. This may result in injuries, fractures and back pains among
the employees.

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(iii) If the employees come into contact with the cleaning agents, they may suffer skin
irritations, rashes, and illnesses caused by exposure to chemicals and their vapors in
confined spaces.
(iv) The cleaning process is very noisy as the pressure hose and the compressor produces
a lot of noise. The noisy environment is bound to cause hearing loss among the
workers when they are exposed to very high noise levels.
(v) The workers cleaning the toilets are constantly stepping on wet floors while hosing
the toilet blocks. Failure to setup clear warning signs may cause injuries to the park
users. The cleaners themselves need to be careful when stepping on the floor, by
using safety boots, to ensure that they do not slip and fall.
The safety manager was aware that the employees knew the contents of the work health and
safety practices but was concerned on the procedures implemented years ago. The employees in
the branch informed the safety manager that there were some changes that needed to be made to
ensure better working conditions. The pressure hose and compressor are loaded and unloaded
each morning. The process can be improved by having a permanent compressor and pressure
hose for each toilet block to ensure that the workers do not need to do the strenuous activities
each morning. According to the WHS act, the safety manager is mandated to ensure that the
employees work in a very conducive environment. The safety manager asked the supervisor in
that branch to ensure that the recommendations were implemented in less than two weeks. A
health and safety representative would be sent to the branch to perform check up on the
implementation of the recommendations and improvement of procedures.
REFERENCES
https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/system/files/documents/1702/how_to_manage_whs_risks.pdf

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