Last Updated on November 19, 2022 by maximosecrets

This is the fourth of five articles on the Safety module of Maximo and the second article on the Safety Plans application.  The two Safety Plans articles are:

• Applying Safety Plans will show how a safety plan is applied to a work order, it will use existing safety plans in the MAXDEMO database. This article covers the relationship between Job Plans and Safety Plans.
• Building Safety Plans (this article) will show how the safety information related to a location, asset or their related records is used to create a safety plan using the Select Hazards action. As this introduces the Safety tab on the Locations and Assets applications, I’ll also use this second article to demonstrate the use of the Work Order Tracking action, Select Safety Hazards. Finally, when a safety plan references multiple work assets, I explore which of the hazards are copied to the work order when the safety plan is applied.

You can find the article on Applying Safety Plans here: http://maximosecrets.com/2021/07/02/applying-safety-plans/

Apart from a generic safety plan with just a set of hazards that a user will indicate as appropriate, (or delete those which are inappropriate), a safety plan will be the safety information related to a location, asset or their safety-related records and the type of work being performed. Safety plans generally, then, pull data from the Locations and Assets applications, which is where we will start, and they are associated with a job plan which defines the type of work being performed, we already covered this last part in the article Applying Safety Plans.

Assets – Safety tab

This part of the article will be exactly the same for the Locations – Safety tab.

In the Assets application and for asset 26020 – 24 Volt-DC Motor, you can see three familiar tabs for Hazards and Precautions, Hazardous Materials and Lock Out/Tag Out rules. There is a fourth tab, Safety-Related Assets. 

In the Hazards and Precautions tab I have added a new hazard ELECSH – Electric Shock, with three precautions:

• GOGGLES – Wear eye protection, an existing precaution record
• INGLOVES – Use Insulated Gloves, a new precaution record
• INTOOLS – Use Insulated Tools, a new precaution record

In the Lock Out/Tag Out tab for the ELECTRIC hazard we need to isolate the 24 Volt-DC Motor. I have added two new Lock Out/Tag Out records:

• TAG112 – Electrically Isolate Asset 26020, for asset 26020, with an Apply Sequence of 2
• TAG117 – Motor Controlled Valve, for asset 26000, with an Apply Sequence of 1

Although it is not shown in this order in the table window Tag Out Procedures for ELECTRIC, TAG117 should proceed before TAG112, we should close the valve before isolating the motor to the valve in case the valve is left in its open state, and we can’t repower its motor. A small configuration, to order the records by Apply Sequence would be useful.

The top two table windows on the Assets application – Safety – Lock Out/Tag Out tab are based on an object called SAFETYLEXICON, the bottom table window is based on the LOCKOUT object. SAFETYLEXICON has five extra fields SL01 to SL05.

In the Lock Out/Tag Out application, when I entered a new Tag Out procedure for asset 26020, for the electrical isolation, it was Tag Out TAG112, I entered three operations:

• Apply Sequence 1 – Stop Motor (red button)
• Apply Sequence 2 – Asset 11617, with Locking Device Required State CLOSED
• Apply Sequence 3 – Apply locking device to circuit breaker 05, with Locking Device Required State LOCKED

Notice that when you reference an asset or location the description of the Lock Out Operations is filled by the asset or location’s description, and it is read-only. I could not say close circuit breaker 05 of asset 11617 the Electric Control Panel – Materials Processing Plant #P1. Thought I would mention this. I got around this by including the circuit breaker in the description for the 3^rd operation – Apply locking device to circuit breaker 05 of asset 11617.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, the Lock Out Operations on the Asset record have not been copied to the asset, they are the Lock Out Operations on the associated Tag Out record. 

I’ll be coming back to the Safety-Related Assets tab later in this article.

Safety Plans – Build a new safety plan

In the Safety Plans application, I have used the New Safety Plan button and created SPLAN03 – Maintenance on 24V motors, the safety plan is created against my default insert site – BEDFORD.

In the Work Assets table window, I have selected asset 26020, our 24 Volt-DC Motor.

When adding a work asset to the SPWORKASSET table either a WORKLOCATION or a WORKASSET can be entered, you cannot have a value in both attributes, they are mutually exclusive. 

The Select Value on the Location field does not restrict by the type of location, although only OPERATING, REPAIR and VENDOR types make sense. Over the years this is one rule that has been relaxed, a work order can now reference an Inventory Storeroom (!). On a PM only locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More of type OPERATING, REPAIR and VENDOR can be used.

After the work assets have been entered on the safety plan you would now use the Select Hazards action to select the hazards associated with each work asset that you wish to copy to the safety plan, but no records are shown.

If I go back in time to when Safety Plans were first introduced in Maximo 4.0, more than 20 years ago, you needed to add the asset to the Safety-Related Assets tab in the Assets application. An OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More setting was introduced to save you having to do that, but it is not the default. I’ll show you both ways, starting with the old method, a workaround of course.

In the Assets application for asset 26020 I have added asset 26020 to the Safety Related Assets table in the Safety – Safety-Related Assets tab.

Back in the Safety Plans application for safety plan SPLAN03 the Select Hazards action now shows the hazards of the work asset. It used to only look at the hazards for the associated safety-related assets and not for the work assets themselves, hence the workaround to add the work assets to the Safety-Related Assets tab.

I have deleted the Safety-Related Asset record for asset 26020 so that I can show you how you might now approach this.

Organizations – Safety Plan Options

In the Organizations application and Safety Plan Options action, there is a single checkbox defined at the site level. For BEDFORD site I will check the field “Show Work Asset’s Hazards in the Select Hazards Action?”. The default for this field is that it is left unchecked, although for all implementations I should expect to see this checked for all sites that use safety plans.

Safety Plans – Build a new safety plan – Select Hazards

In the Safety Plans application, after we have made the change in the Organizations application – Safety Plan Options for the BEDFORD site, the Select Hazards action now shows the same records for the two hazards associated with the work asset 26020. Remember, there are now no Safety-Related Assets.

If there were multiple work assets, then the idea is that you select the assets in turn, review their hazards and decide which are relevant for the safety plan you are building. This safety plan is only for asset 26020 and so we select the two records associated with the asset 26020, and hazards ELECSH, a hazard with precautions, and hazard ELECTRIC, a hazard with Lock Out/Tag Out plans. You then use the Apply button to copy these hazards through to the Safety Plan, then select the next asset to review. In this case with only one work asset, we will use the OK button to save and close the dialog.

The result is that the Hazards and Precautions associated with asset 26020 have been copied to the safety plan. Hazard ELECSH on the safety plan has a Related Asset of 26020.

The two Lock Out/Tag Out procedures associated with the ELECTRIC hazard have also been copied through to the safety plan. 

There are a couple of points to highlight:

• You cannot create a new Tag Out record that is not related to a Hazard, a hazard is always required, the tag out plan is used to eliminate a hazard.
• The tag out enabled hazard is always created to eliminate the hazard for a particular work asset or work location. This might involve performing the tag out procedure on another location or asset, the Related Location or Related Asset. 
• You will see later that when a safety plan is associated with multiple work assets, it is only the tag out records associated with the Work Location or Work Asset on the work order which are copied. 
• For Hazards which are not tag-out enabled, then the Related Location or Related Asset fields are used to determine which records to copy to the work order. If there is no Related Location or Related Asset then that hazard will always be copied when the safety plan is applied to a work order.

Safety Plans – Build a new safety plan – Adding additional hazards

For Safety Plan SPLAN03 we wanted to indicate that there is DUST circulating. The motor is part of asset 26000, a motor controlled valve in location MTP100 – Material Transfers Pipe, a part of the Materials Processing Plant #1 which produces powders for specialty chemical products.

I added hazard DUST and in the Related Location Select Value only one record was shown. Location BR250 is the only location with DUST referenced as a hazard.

Similarly, only two Related Asset records were shown in the Select Value, assets 11210 and 13160 are the only assets which reference the DUST hazard and neither of them are appropriate for this safety plan.

I could have just left the DUST hazard without reference to either a Related Location or a Related Asset, but better to add it, by navigating to the Locations application, finding location MTP100, adding the DUST hazard in the Locations – Safety tab, and then using the “Return With Value” button to associate the DUST hazard as coming from Related Location MTP100.

Notice that if a hazard is related to a location, the Related Asset field is read-only, and vice versa.

The Precautions for DUST hazard are not written to the Safety Plan, they are the records associated with the Hazard record, DUST, precaution RESPMASK – Wear respirator mask, in this case. The precautions related to the hazard are in object HAZARDPREC.

The Hazard records on the Safety Plan are found in the SPLEXICONLINK table, as are the Hazardous Materials and the Tag Out records associated with a hazard. Those tag out records are always associated with a work asset or work location, but for hazards with precautions or hazardous materials, the work asset and work location attributes are always null. 

For the advanced user. When you create a new Safety Plan, Maximo creates behind the scenes, a SPWORKASSET record with a null WORKLOCATION and null WORKASSET attribute. You need to bear this in mind when data loading. The hazards that you see in SPLEXICONLINK have a mandatory SPWORKASSETID as part of its unique index. This is the hidden SPWORKASSET record with a null WORKLOCATION and null WORKASSET and this record must exist for SPLEXICONLINK records to be added.

Using Safety-Related Assets

In the Assets application for asset 26000 – Motor Controlled Valve, the parent to the 24V DC Motor asset 26020, we have not added specifically any hazards and precautions, hazardous materials, or Lock Out/Tag Out procedures. We have however, provided some Safety-Related Assets:

• Asset 26020, the child 24 Volt DC Motor
• Location MTP100, the Materials Transfer Pipe where the asset resides.

In the Safety Plans application, for a new safety plan SPLAN04 – Motor Controlled Valve, I have associated the safety plan with the one work asset, asset 26000. The Select Hazards action shows all the hazards from the two safety-related assets, two from asset 26020 and the one from location MTP100. There are no hazards associated with asset 26000, and hence no additional hazards are shown.

You select the hazards that are relevant to the type of work where the safety plan will be used and use the Apply button to copy this information onto the safety plan.

Remember when you are building a safety plan you should first identify the job plan where it will be used and the work assets it will apply to. The work assets on the safety plan are probably the same ones that are referenced on the Work Assets tab of the Job Plan. 

It is a good idea to add work assets to job plans because the default search for a job plan on both a work order and a PM will use this to match to the location or asset that is referenced on the work order or PM. It really does make the selection of the right job plan so much easier, however, over the years I have found that the Job Plan Work Assets is rarely populated. I think this is because implementation teams associate it with Safety Plans and if safety plans are not used, then we don’t need job plan work assets, this is incorrect.

Back in the Assets application I have added a NOISE hazard to asset 26000, the Motor Controlled Valve is in a noisy environment. This comes with the precaution of EARPLUGS – Hearing Protection. 

In Safety Plan SPLAN04 and the Select Hazards action, we now have a hazard associated with the work asset 26000 it is shown in the Hazards table window. The Hazards of the work assets and their safety related assets and locations are shown.

In the left-hand column I’ve selected the DUST and NOISE hazards and then used the Apply and then OK buttons to save the hazards to the safety plan.

In the Hazards and Precautions tab the NOISE and DUST hazards are shown with their associated precautions.

On re-entering the Select Hazards action there is no change to the hazards that are displayed but if you attempt to select a hazard that has already been applied to the Safety Plan then you will receive the error message “BMXAA3641E – This hazard or tag out has already been associated with this asset.”

The issue here is if you have selected multiple hazards to apply you do not know which ones the message applies to, it would have been preferable to only show the hazards that could be applied.

Work Order Tracking – Select Safety Hazards

In the Work Order Tracking application there is an action Select Safety Hazards which is similar to the action we have seen in the Safety Plans application. I’ve created a new work order 1304 – Select Safety Hazards Test and associated asset 26000, the Motor Controlled Valve, to it. Asset 26000 exists in the operating location MTP100 – Materials Transfer Pipe, and so that location has also been pulled-in.

The action Select Safety Hazards can be used to pull the hazards from the safety related assets onto the work order. The two hazards shown are those for safety-related asset 26020. If you highlighted the location MTP100 – Materials Transfer Pipe which was the other safety related asset on asset 26000 you would find the DUST hazard.

Notice the Select Safety Hazards dialog is not showing the hazards related directly to the work order’s asset or its location, only to their safety related assets. The whole dialog from the description of the top table window “Safety Related Assets” to the information text “The following assets and locations are safety-related assets for the current work order. Each asset might have safety hazards that affect the work environment of the current work order. Select hazards to Apply to Work Order. To finish, click Done.” both indicate that the intention was to only show safety related hazards and not the hazards for the work order’s location or asset.

There is, unfortunately, no way of being able to select the hazards on the work order’s location or asset in the Work Order Tracking application. Well, not without going back to the workaround and including the location or asset as its own Safety Related Asset, or by creating Safety Plans. I have raised this as a case with IBM Support, but I expect I will be asked to raise an RFE for this. 

What hazard records of a Safety Plan are copied to a work order?

When a Safety Plan references multiple work assets and the safety plan includes hazards for each, then what records are copied to the work order when the safety plan is applied?

In the Safety Plans application I’ve created a new safety plan SPLAN05 with two work assets, location MTP100 and asset 26020. 

Using the Select Hazards action I have selected work asset MTP100 and then selected its hazard DUST which has a RESPMASK precaution associated with it. I then selected work asset 26020 and selected one of its hazards ELECSH. The top two records in the Hazards table window show the Related Location (MTP100) and Related Asset (26020). I then used the New Row action and added a third Hazard, one without a Related Location or Related Asset, hazard CONSPACE – yep confined space doesn’t make much business sense, but this is only an illustration.

In the Work Order Tracking application, I’ve created a new work order 1315 – Test Apply Safety Plan with location MTP100, this was one of the work assets.

Further down the Work Order tab I’ve launched the Select Value on the Safety Plan field and chosen the radio button “Show Safety Plans for the Current Work Order”. This uses the location and asset on the work order to find the set of Safety Plans which have these referenced as a Work Asset. Safety Plan SPLAN05 referenced location MTP100 as a work asset, so we will apply this.

Two hazards and their precautions have been copied to the work order when the safety plan was applied, you can see them on the Safety Plan tab. Hazard DUST belonged to location MTP100, and hazard CONSPACE was relevant because it did not reference either a Related Location or Related Asset, a hazard that would always be copied when the safety plan is applied.

I’m going to use the Remove Safety Plan action and then make a few changes to see what hazards are copied when asset 26020 is referenced, or when both asset 26020 and location MTP100 are referenced on the work order.

With the Safety Plan removed and work order 1315 only referencing asset 26020, we will reapply safety plan SPLAN05.

Two hazards and their precautions have been copied to the work order when the safety plan was applied, you can see them on the Safety Plan tab. Hazard ELECSH belonged to asset 26020, and hazard CONSPACE was relevant because it did not reference either a Related Location or Related Asset, a hazard that would always be copied when the safety plan is applied.

When a Safety Plan is applied the hazards that are applied are those where the work order location and/or asset is referenced as a Related Location or Related Asset and any hazard that has no Related Location or Related Asset and is therefore considered generic for the safety plan.

With the Safety Plan removed again and the work order now referencing asset 26020 and location MTP100 then when we reapply safety plan SPLAN05 we get hazards where the Related Location referenced MTP100, or the Related Asset referenced 26020 or where there was no Related Location or Related Asset.

Now we will look to see if the same thing is happening for Lock Out/Tag Out records.

What tag out records of a Safety Plan are copied to a work order?

In the Safety Plans application for SPLAN05 I’ve used the Select Hazards action and highlighted the work asset 26020 in the Work Assets table window and then selected the hazard ELECTRIC which has Lock Out / Tag Out operations associated with it.

I’ve then used the Apply button and OK button to copy this hazard to the safety plan.

Safety Plan SPLAN05 now has the ELECTRIC hazard with 26020 as the Work Asset. It has two Tag Out procedures, TAG112 and TAG117, with lock out operations associated with each.

In the Work Order Tracking application for work order 1315 I have used the Remove Safety Plan action and then I’ve chosen SPLAN05 from the Safety Plan Select Value. The result is that the three hazards and their precautions have been added as we saw before, and on the Lock Out/Tag Out tab the ELECTRIC hazard and the two Tag Out records and their Lock Out Tasks have been copied from the safety plan.

Now I’ll add a Tag Out hazard associated with location MTP100 to our safety plan.

In the Safety Plans application for SPLAN05 I’ve used the New Row button to add a new Tag Out enabled Hazard FLOW – Liquid flow through pipes. The Work Location’s Select Value will only show MTP100, as it is the only Work Asset for this safety plan which is a location.

I’ve also selected Related Asset 11430. The Select Value on this field will only show assets with the FLOW hazard.

The FLOW hazard on the Safety Plan pulls in the associated Tag Outs (NOFLOW01) and their Lock Out Operations.

In the Work Order Tracking application for work order 1315 which is referencing both asset 26020 and location MTP100, after using the action Remove Safety Plan and then reselecting safety plans SPLAN05, on the Lock/Out / Tag Out tab we have both the ELECTRIC and now the FLOW hazard. The screenshot shows the Tag Outs NOFLOW01 with its Lock Out Tasks copied from the safety plan.

For Lock Out/Tag Outs the records selected are those where the work order’s location or asset is referenced as a Work Location or Work Asset on the Safety Plans Tag Out Hazards, it is not matching to the Related Location or Related Asset fields.

I have removed the Safety Plan again and this time made work order 1315 reference only asset 26020.

When reapplying safety plan SPLAN05 it is only the ELECTRIC hazard associated with Work Asset 26020 which is applied to the work order.

When I removed the safety plan again and made the work order only reference location MTP100 (and no asset) then it is the FLOW hazard that is copied, it is associated with Work Location MTP100, the Related Asset is 11430.

For Lock Out/Tag Outs the Work Location and Work Asset is being used in the matching process, not the Related Location or Related Asset.

Duplicating a Safety Plan

When you duplicate a safety plan the Safety Plan field will be empty and you will need to provide a value. In this example SPLAN2 was duplicated and I entered SPLAN6. All the child records will be copied, including work assets, hazards and precautions, hazardous materials and Lock Out / Tag Out rules.

You cannot delete the work assets if there are any Tag Out records as these may refer to the work asset. You will receive the error message “BMXAA3629E – Cannot delete work asset, it is linked to other business objects.”. You will still not be able to delete a work asset if a hazard references it as a related asset, you get the same error message.

Even after you remove all Hazards and Precautions, Hazardous Materials and Lock Out / Tag Out rules, you still cannot delete the work asset, the same message is received. This looks to be an issue and a case has been reported to IBM Support.