A ready-to-deliver toolbox talk for foremen and supervisors. 8-10 minute spoken script plus briefing register for operative sign-in.
The wood chipper is the piece of kit most likely to kill someone on a vegetation job, and it's nearly always the same way: an operative drawn into the infeed while feeding brash. It happens in a heartbeat, usually to experienced people late in the shift. Everything in this talk exists to keep hands and bodies away from that infeed.
A chipper falls under PUWER like any dangerous machine, and the HSE guidance for it (AIS38, Power-fed mobile wood chippers) is built around one thing: protecting the operator at the infeed. Almost every chipper fatality is a draw-in at the infeed, often someone reaching to push one more small piece of brash through by hand. The controls in this talk, the side-feed, the no-hand-feeding rule, two people, and the engine-off blockage drill, are the ones that keep people alive, so we don't water them down.
Spoken script for the supervisor. Read or paraphrase, in order.
I'm starting with the rule that keeps you alive: your hands do not go into the infeed chute, no matter how blocked it is, no matter how small the piece. The rollers don't care that you were quick. The people this machine kills were nearly all reaching in to clear or push something. There is always another way, a tool, a longer bit of brash, or stop the machine. Never your hand.
Before anything goes in, we test the emergency stop or last-chance feed bar and we record it. That's the control that saves you if something does start drawing in, so we prove it works at the start of every shift. If it doesn't stop the feed, the chipper's out of service until it does, simple as that.
Stand to the side of the chute, never square in front of the infeed, so if anything snatches you're not in line to follow it in. Bigger material goes in butt-first and you let go and step back, let the machine take it at its own rate. Don't hang on to something that's being pulled in faster than you expected, let go.
It sounds backwards but the little offcuts and handfuls of brash are the dangerous bit, because that's when a hand ends up right at the rollers. So small stuff goes in with a long push tool, or you bundle it inside bigger material and feed that. You never hand-feed little pieces down the chute. That single habit is the one that gets experienced people.
Never a lone operator on the chipper. One feeds, one stands as banksman and watches the feed with a hand ready for the stop bar. If you're on your own and the machine starts taking you, there's nobody to hit the stop. So if it's just you, the chipper doesn't run.
Anything loose can be caught and drag you in with it, so before you feed: no open cuffs, no drawstrings, no scarf, no lanyard hanging off you, long hair tied back. Gloves are close-fitting, not big loose gauntlets that can be grabbed by the material and pull your hand in. Check yourself and check your mate before the first feed.
It blocks, you don't fight it. Stop feeding, engine off, take the ignition key out and the isolator key if it's got one, and put them in your pocket. Then wait, and watch, until the rollers and disc have completely stopped, not slowing, stopped. Clear it from above with a tool, never reaching into the infeed. If it won't clear safely from above, the machine comes out of service and gets tagged.
Set the chipper up on firm level ground, chocked, with the discharge pointing away from people, the road and anything it could blast chippings at. Mind where the exhaust is and keep dry brash off it. A chipper sited badly turns its own discharge into a hazard for everyone stood near it.
What the supervisor should be actively spotting on walk-arounds.
Ask one or two of these at the end. Confirms attention more than a silent nod.
A toolbox talk is generic by design. It works on every site. Your RAMS isn't. Briefkit writes a site-specific RAMS for your actual job: the hazards, sequence, PPE, competencies and emergency arrangements that apply to this work, at this address, by this team. £30 per document.
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