aeSolutions establishes New Machinery Safety Line of Service, Appoints Catherine Hillard to Lead

Line of Service to Improve Safety and Reduce Risk by Conforming with Machinery Safety Standards

GREENVILLE, S.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--aeSolutions, a consulting, engineering, and systems integration company, today announced the company’s new line of service, Machinery Safety. Led by Catherine Hillard, the service line aims to reduce injuries associated with human-machine interaction and improve overall plant value while achieving conformity with machinery safety standards.

Under the umbrella of Machinery Safety, aeSolutions will offer simple, efficient solutions that can be tailored to client specific needs and circumstances:

• Risk Assessments to discover hazards, classify risk, and identify safeguarding objectives
• Safeguard Specification to make certain appropriate risk reduction is achieved, including selection and design, functional safety analysis, safety function requirements, and implementation
• State of Conformity Evaluation to address areas of improvement for installed safeguards
• Training on hazard awareness, risk assessment, and machinery safety standards requirements

The Machinery Safety service will assist clients in demonstrating compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) through conformity with standards set forth by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards development body, B11, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA).

“aeSolutions has always focused on process safety-related hazards that can result in the high-consequence incidents that make the national or even global news,” said Ken O’Malley, aeSolutions co-founder, and president. “But thousands of serious injuries – including fatalities – are caused by machinery safety hazards each year in the United States. aeSolutions is proud to bring our brand and expertise to bear in this new service to our existing and future clients.”

In addition to increasing safety and reducing injuries, engagement with Machinery Safety will result in a reduction of costs associated with injuries, such as downtime, liability and punitive damages, along with increased reliability, quality, and overall safety culture. Machinery Safety clients – such as plant managers, safety leaders, and engineering managers from a range of industries, including packaging, food, chemical, auto, aerospace, and robotics – will benefit from aeSolutions’ strong engineering and technical expertise, unbiased safeguard selection, laser-focused compliance package, and full-service lifecycle approach.

Catherine Hillard, certified machinery safety expert (CMSE), has been appointed to lead the new service line as Lifecycle Solutions Manager for Machinery Safety. In this role, Hillard will be responsible for managing the complete lifecycle of the Machinery Safety service line and ensuring clients are provided with superior service. Her decade’s worth of experience includes serving as Aagard’s safety and compliance manager and as both a facilities engineer and air quality engineer for Extraction Oil & Gas.

“I am thrilled to be joining aeSolutions to lead this important new service line,” said Hillard. “I am passionate about safety in manufacturing, decreasing risk, and improving efficiency. aeSolutions has a fantastic reputation due to sound technical expertise and strong relationships. Our team continues to invest in service lines that promote the safety of the industries that we are dedicated to serving. For me, it is very simple - improving safety strengthens manufacturing, and I am proud to be part of that.”

About aeSolutions

In business since 1998, aeSolutions is a consulting, engineering, and systems integration company that provides industrial process safety and automation products and services. They specialize in helping industrial clients achieve their risk management and operational excellence goals through expertise in process safety, combustion control and safeguarding, safety instrumented systems, control system design and integration, alarm management, and related operations and integrity management systems. For more information, visit www.aesolutions.com.