Welding creates two hazards that behave completely differently. Fire risk is acute and immediate, which is what the permit and fire watch address. Fume exposure is chronic — manganese and hexavalent chromium accumulate over a career, and the damage is neurological and carcinogenic rather than something a technician feels at the end of a shift. Source capture positioned at the arc is what separates a controlled exposure from an uncontrolled one.
The steps ChatterFix schedules for this PM. Every step is a checkable item on the work order — a technician can speak their way through it without touching a keyboard.
Welding creates two hazards that behave completely differently. Fire risk is acute and immediate, which is what the permit and fire watch address. Fume exposure is chronic — manganese and hexavalent chromium accumulate over a career, and the damage is neurological and carcinogenic rather than something a technician feels at the end of a shift. Source capture positioned at the arc is what separates a controlled exposure from an uncontrolled one.
Extraction gets pushed aside because it is in the way of the work, so it runs correctly during the audit and nowhere else. Exposure monitoring either is not done or is done once and never repeated. On the fire side, hot work drifts into being permitless for 'quick' jobs, and the fire watch gets dropped first — which is precisely how smouldering combustibles turn into a fire an hour after everyone has gone home.
Quarterly for the program check. Permits are per-job and non-negotiable, and exposure monitoring follows the applicable substance-specific schedule. Any new process, base metal or consumable changes the fume composition and should trigger a fresh assessment rather than an assumption that the old one still applies.
This procedure — and every other PM for your industry — is already built into ChatterFix. Pick your industry and it lands on the right equipment, on the right interval, in about three minutes.