Smart Pit Safety Compliance | EMEA

Complying with the "Ensured refuge space" requirement of the new safety standards is especially difficult
With the issuance of new elevator safety standards EN81-20 and EN81-50 in Europe in 2014, elevator manufacturers have been preparing for application of these regulations. While regulatory compliance will require measures in relation to a wide variety of aspects, the challenge of "Ensured refuge space" is certainly one of the most challenging ones for design engineers.

Elevator maintenance personnel must enter the "pit" located at the bottom of the elevator hoist way to perform maintenance. The new safety standards require that a refuge space must be created to prevent being struck by the cage while in the pit. For already existing elevators, the large-scale construction needed to increase the size of the pit space itself requires time and costs. For this reason, an approach has been adopted of preventing an accident with human injuries or fatalities by creating conditions enabling maintenance personnel to flee from the pit. This method specifically consists of using props (supports) as a refuge device. However, use of this method can still result in an accident if personnel simply set the props in place without checking that they are securely installed.

Ensuring safety in the pit with both refuge device and safety switches
If you are not sure what safety measures would be best to counter accident risks, let IDEC, your safety measures specialist, and recommend low-cost realistic practical solutions to match your needs. The essential requirement in this case is to thoroughly prevent human injury by creating conditions that enable maintenance personnel to escape any danger. Use of only refuge device does not entirely eliminate the risk of an accident, as personnel could forget to set the device, and therefore concerns still exist regarding safety in such cases. To counter this, you can use safety equipment as a means to improve safety that enables the creation of a safety circuit so that you can detect whether refuge device is securely set in place.

IDEC recommends using refuge device together with our HS5D Safety Switches in order to ensure proper refuge space inside a pit. Safety can further be increased by installing actuators to the refuge device and safety switches to the location where that device is set to configure a mechanism in which the safety circuit is created by the action of maintenance personnel installing the refuge device. This eliminates the need for large-scale construction and substantial design changes to provide safety that is even more suitable for elevator work sites, as well as compliance with the new elevator safety standards.
 

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