Technical information

Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and

Safety (CCHOS): it is the Canadian equivalent of the

American OSHA. From 1978 the role of this Centre is

to provide occupational safety guidelines for factories and working places, which

are valid throughout the Canadian federation. Like for OSHA, the rules defined by

CCOHS can be modified by the Labour ministry of each state provided it

enhances safety.

1.3 The role of the AHJ

The North American approach is completely different from the European one.

Self-certification is not considered satisfactory and the safety of a plant or

machinery is based on the premise that everything has been previously controlled

and certified.

The guidelines compiled by OSHA are taken as reference by AHJs to settle their

own safety rules for workers;AHJs can modify the OSHA prescriptions only for

the sake of safety.

In particular,Annex G, article 80.13 of the National Electrical Code reads: “The

Authority Having Jurisdiction shall be permitted to render

interpretations of this Code in order to provide clarifications to its

requirements.”

This affirmation in the NEC is fundamental as it enacts the possibility for an AHJ

to interpret the NEC and accordingly approve or not, in the last resort, some

machinery or any electrical equipment.

The inspection by Supervisory authorities consists of:

■ checking that the design and manufacture are based on the rules and

legislation in force

■ checking that the components used are certified by an accredited NRTL

laboratory

The responsibility of these bodies is to check conformity with the safety standards

in force under operating conditions (industrial plants or machinery). For example,

for electrical systems this inspection in done by referring to the NEC installation

codes.

1.4 Obligations of machinery manufacturers

The obligations for machinery manufacturers who try to import their products

into the European Economic Space (EES) or the North American market can be

summarized as follows:

■ to enter the EES: obligation to follow the reference directives for the product,

to carry out an analysis of the machinery risks in order to draw up the

Technical Document, obligation to bear the CE marking, without having the

machinery certified by third body (except for foreseen cases)

INTRODUCTION TO NORTH AMERICAN STANDARDS