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04/09/2009
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Legislation concerning the safe design of machinery has been delayed after concerns about its implementation were expressed by machine builders.
 The concerns focus around the practicality of implementation, particularly the requirement for component mean time between failure data, which in many cases is not currently available.
As a result, the Machinery Directive Working Group of the European Environmental & Technical Regulation Directorate has decided that designing to safety standard EN 954-1 will be acceptable for some time yet – expected to be between three and five years - while the newer EN 13849-1 standards face revision before being enforced in the future.
UK based industrial and safety compliance consultants Laidler Associates broadly welcomes the news but cautions of deficiencies in many areas of the current standard. Paul Laidler, managing director at the company said: "For most control system and machine builders, this is very good news since it gives time for the work needed to underpin the new EN 13849-1 standard to be carried out carefully and thoroughly. Nevertheless, retaining EN 954-1 does have its downside, as there are many areas that this standard doesn't cover including, for example, programmable safety equipment.
"For this reason, control system and machine builders must be careful about placing too much reliance on EN 954-1 as a way of demonstrating that they have fully met their obligations in relation to control system safety."
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Author
Dr Tom Shelley
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