AI for safety equipment distributors, tested on plant programs your desk already quoted.

Both jobs come with an answer key. A plant's program sits in your files beside the quote your desk built from it, and an auditor's request sits beside the packet that went back. A reviewer can lay each draft next to real work and mark it row by row, and nobody has to invent a test case.

A plant's PPE paper is seldom one document. OSHA's general PPE rule applies its hazard assessment and training paragraphs to eye, face, head, foot, hand and fall protection, and says they do not apply to respirators or electrical protective equipment, which have rules of their own. Connecticut's Department of Labor publishes a sample program that splits the work the same way, sending respirators and hearing protection to programs of their own. One account can hand your desk a matrix, a respirator program and a rubber goods requirement, and the quote draws on all of them.

Who pays can split an order. That same rule has employers provide protective equipment at no cost to employees, with exceptions that include non-specialty safety-toe footwear and non-specialty prescription safety eyewear that workers may wear off the job site. A boot or prescription eyewear program can run on different terms from the rest of the account, so the draft keeps those lines apart. How a rule applies to one employer is for that employer and its counsel, and nothing on this page is legal or safety advice.

Some buyers lock the part, and others leave it open. San Antonio Water System's annual contract for safety hard hats and helmets, bid for 2018, ran 14 lines by maker and part number, most of them beside the utility's own stock number, down to a chin strap, a flame retardant winter liner and earmuffs for a slotted brim hat. Only the climbing helmet carried the words "or approved equal." A plant program does the opposite: it names a hazard and a standard and leaves the product to you, and that is the harder read.

The later jobs run on dates someone else sets. OSHA's table for rubber insulating equipment has gloves tested before first issue and every 6 months after, and sleeves and blankets every 12. Its bulletin on direct-reading portable gas monitors says a bump test or calibration check should come before each day's use, following the maker's instructions, and that employers should keep calibration records for the life of each instrument. If your shop tests gloves or services monitors, those dates are already in your records.

The trade's own association folded. Trade press reported in May 2012 that the Safety Equipment Distributors Association had ceased to exist at the end of 2011 and had given up its interest in the Qualified Safety Sales Professional course to the International Safety Equipment Association. ISEA's board set distributor dues to match what SEDA members had paid. Reading a plant's program is still mostly a skill your senior people carry, which is why one of them decides this test.

One limit covers both jobs. The proof of concept never touches your ERP or a live quote. It never decides what protection a job needs, and it never decides that a product is suitable or compliant. A qualified safety person at your customer decides what the job needs, and a person at your company checks every list and every document before it goes out.