Unfinished Work Has to Be Safe Too

Everyday culture judges safety by the moment of active work: the tool is switched off, so the danger is over. But an unfinished structure, an open container or a removed guard keeps working after the person doing the job has left.

Paint dries. A part waits to be replaced. A wall stays open until the next day. A project will continue after the weekend.

The intermediate state has to be safe in itself.

You cannot count on everyone remembering:

• where the electricity has been switched off;
• which board is not yet fixed;
• what is in the open container;
• why the appliance must not be switched on;
• where the protective cover has been moved to.

A hazard is best removed physically, and where that is impossible, isolated and clearly marked.

Before stopping, it helps to ask:

Could someone switch it on, move it, pick it up or step on it by accident?

What happens overnight?

What will children, animals, rain or cleaning change?

Will I be able to rebuild the context tomorrow?

After work, tools go back in their place not for the aesthetics of the workshop. That way you can see that nothing has been left inside a mechanism, on the stairs or in the grass, where it will wait for a bare foot.

Cleaning up is the last stage of the job, not a separate moral discipline invented by parents.

What makes an intermediate state dangerous is that it is protected only by one person’s memory. While the worker is in the room, a removed socket means “I know there are bare ends in there”. When he goes to the shop for forty minutes, it is just a hole in the wall at child height, and no information about it remains in the room. Tape on the ends, a note on the consumer unit, a closed door — these are ways of moving knowledge out of a head and into an object, where it will be seen by someone who was not part of the conversation.

A good check before leaving is to imagine that tomorrow someone who did not listen to you will come in here. Usually that turns out to be a member of the household. Sometimes it is you, only tired and sure you remember everything.