Hot work permit SOP: gas test, fire watch, and closure
A hot work permit SOP for ship repair: gas-test the atmosphere, assign a fire watch, get dock master and HSE sign-off, then hold a mandatory post-work watch before the permit closes.
How it works
Match the lanes to your yard's actual roles
"Technician", "HSE / Fire Watch", "Dock Master" and "Gas-Free Engineer" are FAYARD's structure. A smaller yard often folds Gas-Free Engineer into HSE, and a yard using a contracted gas-testing service should give it its own lane rather than hiding it inside Technician, because who tested the atmosphere is exactly what an incident review asks first.
Write real numbers into the gas-test limits, not 'safe'
"Atmosphere within safe limits for hot work?" needs a stated flammable-gas percentage and oxygen range attached to the box or its comment, not the word safe on its own. A gas-free engineer working a fixed instrument reading against a written threshold has a defensible decision; one working against a feeling does not.
Decide how long your fire watch runs, and put the number in the box
This template's "Maintain fire watch for 30 minutes after work stops" is FAYARD's minimum for open hull and workshop spaces. A yard with confined double-bottoms or heavily insulated machinery spaces often extends it to 60 minutes, and that number belongs on the diagram itself, not in a separate policy nobody has open while the torch is running.
Use the People column to keep continuity where it matters
Assign the same named person to the gas test, the fire watch and the post-work watch where your staffing allows it, the way this template assigns Nathan Reyes across all three. The workload BI panel will then show a realistic single-person load for the permit instead of hiding a handoff that never actually happened.
Decide what a denial actually costs
"Deny permit and record the corrective action required" loops back to "Inspect work area for combustibles and adjacent tanks or spaces", restarting the whole area-preparation phase. If your yard's HSE denials are usually paperwork rather than the space itself, add a shorter return path so a paperwork fix doesn't force a full re-inspection of a space nobody actually touched.
Frequently asked questions
What is a hot work permit and why does it need its own SOP?
A hot work permit is the authorization gate a yard runs before any welding, cutting, grinding or other spark- or flame-producing task begins in or near a space that could hold flammable vapour. It needs its own SOP, separate from a general permit-to-work system, because the two failure modes it exists to catch, an unmeasured atmosphere and an unwatched space after the work stops, are specific to ignition sources and don't show up in a generic work-permit checklist.
Who should be the fire watch, and can they do other work at the same time?
The fire watch should be a named individual whose only task for the duration is watching the work and the space around it, including behind bulkheads and through deck penetrations the welder can't see. In this template, Nathan Reyes, the Gas-Free Engineer who already tested the atmosphere, holds the fire watch role through execution and the mandatory post-work period. What matters is that the role is never combined with actively performing the hot work itself.
Why does the atmosphere test loop back through ventilation instead of just failing the permit?
An unsafe first reading is common, not exceptional, on a yard with confined double-bottoms, tank tops and recently emptied fuel spaces, so treating it as a dead end would just push technicians toward re-testing informally until they got a pass. "Ventilate space and remove combustibles, then retest" keeps the recovery inside the controlled process: the same gas-free engineer removes the specific hazard found and retests against the same limits, rather than the permit being abandoned and restarted from a blank form.
How long does the fire watch have to stay after the welding stops?
This template's minimum is 30 minutes, at "Maintain fire watch for 30 minutes after work stops", because smouldering material inside insulation or behind a bulkhead can flare up well after the torch is off. Many yards extend that period for confined or heavily insulated spaces; the number should be written into the SOP and the permit itself, not left as an unstated convention the fire watch has to remember.
What happens if HSE denies the permit?
"HSE approves and signs the hot work permit?" can return "Denied", which routes to "Deny permit and record the corrective action required" and back into re-inspection rather than simply stopping the process. That loop matters because it forces the corrective action to be written down and the space re-checked before anyone resubmits the request, instead of the permit quietly disappearing and the same request coming back verbally an hour later.