Frequently Asked Questions
PUWER stands for the Provision and Use of Work Equipment Regulations 1998. It applies to virtually all employers and self-employed people who provide or control work equipment — from hand tools through to complex production lines, CNC machine tools and robot cells.
No. HSE is explicit that not all work equipment needs formal inspection, and where it does, the frequency should be set by risk assessment — taking account of the manufacturer's recommendations, operating environment and how the equipment is used — rather than a fixed annual rule. Equipment running harsh or continuous duty cycles typically needs more frequent inspection than lightly used equipment in a controlled environment.
HSE guidance is clear that the person determining and carrying out an inspection needs enough knowledge and experience to know what to look at, what to look for, and what to do when a problem is found — and that this can sometimes be done in-house. In practice, complex or integrated machinery (multi-axis CNC, robot cells, interlocked guarding) usually needs an external machine safety engineer with hands-on control-systems experience, because the competence bar is genuinely higher than for a single stand-alone machine.
EN ISO 12100 is the general risk assessment and risk reduction standard for machinery — it's how hazards are identified and evaluated. EN ISO 13849-1 then governs the design and verification of the safety-related parts of the control system (guard interlocks, e-stops, safety relays) once a control measure has been chosen. A thorough assessment uses both: 12100 to find and prioritise the risk, 13849 to verify the fix is actually rated correctly.
No. Assessment findings stand independently of any remedial quotation. You'll get a clear, prioritised action register regardless of who carries out the work — internally, through another contractor, or through us. We'd rather the finding be accurate than convenient to our own pipeline.
A report covering the applicable PUWER regulations against each item of equipment, a risk evaluation against EN ISO 12100 for any non-conformance identified, and a prioritised, categorised summary of findings so you know what needs addressing first. An example report is available on request.
Not necessarily. Most remedial work — adding guarding, upgrading an interlock, improving isolation — is designed specifically to restore the machine to its originally intended safe condition without amounting to a “substantial modification.” Where a proposed fix would cross that line, we'll flag it clearly before any work goes ahead, since that changes the compliance route significantly.
Every project is scoped and quoted individually — price is driven by the number of machines, their complexity, integration into lines or cells, available documentation, site geography and the depth of analysis required. We don't publish a generic price list because two “PUWER assessments” on paper can involve very different amounts of engineering work.
Both. Assessment and remediation are deliberately kept connected: the same engineer who identifies a guarding or control-system risk under PUWER can design, build and sign off the fix — including safety-rated interlocks, light curtains, laser scanners and control panels for automated lines and robot cells — all verified to EN ISO 13849.
MTS Machine Safety is led by Steve Blackshaw, CMSE® – Certified Machinery Safety Expert (TÜV NORD CERT, via Pilz), with 15+ years of hands-on CNC and machine-control experience before moving into machine safety engineering. The business is SafeContractor approved and carries £10m Public and Products Liability and £1m Professional Indemnity insurance.
For more information or if you would like to speak with one of our team please contact us: