It’s important to understand that a safety issue does not stop work in the sense of pushing an off button. Why is that? In order of importance, your job responsibilities are safety, environment, and then production (your work output). With this in mind, adequate safety is what permits you to work.
Think of controls that have an automatically resetting permissive. As long as the permissive is satisfied, the control action can be enabled. That permissive is there because the condition that satisfies it is more important than executing the desired control action. For example, the closed position of drain valve on an acid storage tank might be a permissive for the fill pump to start.
So it is with your job safety. It is more important than proceeding under undue risk to achieve a production or maintenance goal.
You somehow walked out into the plant without your safety glasses? You don’t wait until break to go back and get them. The safest solution is someone with safety glasses goes and gets you a pair while you wait in a relatively safe location (as opposed to running the eye gauntlet to get the ones you left behind).
Punctured your insulated glove while halfway through the job? At this point, it may be more dangerous to leave the panel open while you get another pair. So do you tape over the puncture and soldier on? Or do you see the “permissive” is gone and restore the system to a “fail safe” condition (that is, you disconnect your test leads and reinstall the covers)?
You can think of a seemingly infinite number of safety issues that can arise. Some of them pose no immediate threat. For example, you encountered an unclosed opening in an electrical cabinet. It violates 110.12(A) and OSHA 1910.303. So it is definitely a problem, but unless you might accidentally drop something into it (a top hole, and you are working above it) or the hole is pointed at your general location (limiting blast protection), it is not of a permissive nature. You can probably submit a work order and in the meantime place red phasing tape (not sufficient as a repair) over it to help flag it.
Those issues that pose no immediate threat do not act as unsatisfied permissives, so they do not need to stop the work. Treat anything that raises your risk as creating an unsatisfied permissive. Proceed with the work only when that permissive is satisfied. That doesn’t necessarily mean the underlying hazard is eliminated. It means the risk has been addressed through proper risk assessment and risk control.
