Duties of Employer

The following is a brief summary of the employer's duties with respect to confined spaces. An employer must:

• Keep unauthorized entrants out of the confined space, and pedestrians and vehicles away from the area.
• Identify all hazards before anyone enters.
• Develop safe practices and procedures for entry, including:
  • Give all entrants access to monitoring and testing data, and the opportunity to witness testing in person.
  • Isolate all physical hazards.
  • If possible, eliminate all atmospheric hazards. Otherwise, provide personal protective equipment.
  • Make sure all atmospheric hazards remain gone for as long as an entrant is inside.
  • Make sure that monitoring will detect a new hazard in time, if ventilation fails.
  • Eliminate anything that makes it dangerous to open the cover (like high pressure).

Employers must also:

• Provide all the equipment listed earlier, keep it maintained, and train employees on how to use it properly; the equipment may include testing and monitoring instruments, ventilation equipment, communication equipment, PPE, lighting, barriers, entry and exit equipment, and rescue and emergency equipment
• Make sure there is an authorized attendant
• Specify who is responsible for each duty (including entry, attending, testing, and supervising) and clearly state their duties
• Develop procedures for rescue, and communicate that plan to entrants and attendants (these procedures can include hiring an outside rescue force to be on call, calling 911, or training someone on how to do a proper rescue and providing equipment for that rescue)
• Coordinate activities between multiple groups, including workers of other employees, so that no one endangers each other. For instance, if another crew is driving a skid-steer loader near your sewer maintenance project, your employer must work out the scheduling so that the other company does not drive nearby while your employees are underground.
• Revise the safety plan as needed (for example, if the original safety plan proves to be inadequate to keep everyone safe, or if an entrant or attendant discovers a prohibited condition).
• Provide full safety training in a language and vocabulary that all employees can understand, at no cost to the employee.

There are, of course, more duties that employers or supervisors must handle.

To learn more about Confined Spaces visit our Construction Confined Spaces Online Training web page.