Most safety professionals know OSHA standards as stand-alone requirements. What many safety professionals don’t know is that, during the promulgation of many of these standards, OSHA recognized hazards that have a complementary relationship with other existing standards. One of the best examples of this are two standards that happen to fall into the top 10 most cited standards of 2014 – Lockout/Tagout (LO/TO) and Machine Guarding standards (Subpart O).

To better understand this relationship, let’s first explore the scope and purpose of each standard. The LO/TO standard covers the servicing and maintenance of machines and equipment in the unexpected energization or start-up of machines or equipment, or release of stored energy that could cause injury to employees. The purpose of the LO/TO standard is to control the energy that may be present during the servicing and/or maintenance of machines and equipment to avoid injury through the use of established procedures and techniques.