Canada–Nova Scotia Offshore Area Occupational Health and Safety Regulations — 165
Occupational health and safety program 165 The risks associated with diving operations are prescribed risks for the purpose of paragraph 210.02(2)(a) of the Act and the occupational health and safety program in respect of a workplace from which a dive project is carried out must include (a) procedures for consulting with employees who perform a variety of roles in the diving operations, including members of the dive team, with respect to the management of risks to divers’ health and safety; (b) procedures for obtaining the agreement of the dive safety specialists designated in respect of the dive project with respect to the hazards identified, the risks assessed and the hazard control measures to be implemented; (c) procedures for safely carrying out each task associated with the dive project, including with regard to the equipment to be used; (d) procedures for ensuring divers’ safe and controlled entry into and exit from the water; (e) procedures for carrying out decompression in a manner that will minimize decompression sickness or other adverse effects on divers, including having regard to repetitive factor and residual inert gases; (f) procedures for treating decompression sickness, including decompression sickness that results from planned or unplanned omitted decompression, and communicating with a specialized dive physician in respect of that treatment; (g) procedures for responding to hazardous weather or water conditions; (h) procedures for aborting and resuming dives; (i) procedures for calculating — in a manner that allows for leakage, waste and other unplanned depletions — the quantities of breathing mixtures required by divers, including for both primary and secondary use and for therapeutic treatment; (j) procedures for storing breathing mixtures that, among other things, identify a single Canadian or international standard to be used for the colour-coding of all gas cylinders and quads or other banks associated with the dive project; (k) procedures for providing breathing mixtures to divers; (l) procedures for ensuring that all materials or objects introduced into or used in diving bells or compression chambers do not contain or produce gases or vapours that may be harmful to divers; (m) procedures for maintaining divers’ thermal balance and comfort, including by heating their breathing mixtures if necessary and ensuring the continued supply of heat in the event of any failure of the primary thermal control system; (n) procedures for installing barriers or isolating energy sources as necessary to protect divers from contact with hazards; (o) procedures for ensuring that the dive contractor is made aware of any seismic work being carried out in the vicinity of the workplace that may pose a risk to divers’ health or safety and for communicating with the persons carrying out that seismic work; (p) procedures for assessing seabed or seawater contamination levels in areas in which contamination is a known hazard; and (q) if the workplace is a dynamically positioned vessel, (i) procedures for responding to changes in its station keeping status, (ii) procedures for operating in close proximity to marine installations or structures or other physical obstacles, (iii) procedures for guarding against thruster wash and suction effect, (iv) procedures for preventing equipment entanglement, and (v) procedures for repositioning the vessel that address, among other things, the maximum increments for repositioning and heading change while divers are in the water.