Gary B wrote:
It is all good intentions, however; I can imagine disastrous results if someone unfamiliar with the industry or arc flash safety thinks they can become an arc flash instructor due to attending or reviewing TTT type materials.
It needs to be said that if some enterprise thinks they can save money by selecting a person to send through this TTT program and then checking off all the boxes, that probably won't save money.
Most organizations believe that the safety professionals are more than capable of understanding and handling arc flash instruction and procedures and not just risk management procedures and processes. Even Fortune 500 companies do this...and fail miserably at it. I can write books...actually comedies of errors, based on these guys alone. The other extreme is that they let their maintenance departments have free reign. And most of the time those groups are run by mechanical engineers who think that you can simply buy some wonder gadget or fix everything with absolute certainty or by spending enough money, again with disastrous results. And trusting electricians to do it is similar because they value comfort and convenience over safety. If it seems like there is a theme here, it's this...all of these groups have some honest contribution to make individually based on their respective motivations and views but individually it's a complete and utter disaster. Some examples:
1. Since many people get injured using knives, let's just ban knives. Oh you have large diameter cable with extruded insulation? Well, deal with it. We have special box cutters in the shipping and receiving department that will solve all your problems.
2. Just wear a 40 calorie suit because it's the highest rating on the market for EVERY electrical task including operating 15 A lighting panel breakers or terminating #24 gauge CAT 5E cables or performing a task in an area with the lights already out with class 2 gloves because that's the highest rating available on the market so you are automatically safe from every conceivable electrical hazard. And as a bonus, we never have to shut down our plant or spend any money on maintenance at all because all our electricians walk around in bomb suits and are protected against the total lack of preventative maintenance that we find is acceptable because it worked for the first 10 years of operation.
3. Just close and latch the doors, turn your head, and flip the switch. Oh, and holding your breath also helps.
4. Don't do any maintenance because that involves risk. What we'll do instead is simply have a contracting company do all the risky stuff that we can't or won't do ourselves and simply do all switchgear mainenance and inspections once every 3-5 years using outside contractors using a lowest bidder process.
5. Just replace it all with arc resistant gear. Don't do anything but switching, and replace it every 10 years.
6. Have the utility pull the fuses instead of taking risks operating the equipment.
7. Trust in old one eye/one arm Joe. He's been doing this for 40+ years and it might have maimed him but hasn't killed him yet! He knows how to make it work safely.
8. Trust the safety manager and the safety consultants that he hired. These guys would scare the crap out of you as a training strategy. Not only that but by the time they get done you won't ever be able to work on anything electrical again and still follow the screwed up rules they come up with but can't explain.
9. Everything is OK as long as you fill out a lengthy 20 page form where basically you tell us just how unsafe what you are about to do is and then we simply get the plant manager or safety manager to sign off on doing it that way anyways. And if something does go wrong, question #3 on the accident investigation form that must be completed is "Is employee at fault?" And by the way there is a "yes" blank but no "no" blank beside it for good reason.
10. We have trucks/fork trucks around. So make sure to wear the polyester shirts and jackets and pants over the top of the arc rated ones because it's more important to make sure that you are visible than worrying about burns.
11. It's winter. And the arc rated winter clothing is like 5 times more expensive than the most expensive brand name overalls and jackets. So we got the brand name ones to split the difference between those and the cheap ones we bought for everyone else.
12. As long as it's arc rated, you can wear it. Even if it's a sleeveless tank-top style shirt that at least covers your chest area.
13. Wear rubber gloves with leather protectors whenever you are within 42" of any electrical equipment doing work on it. That includes attempting to terminate #20-24 gauge thermocouple wiring with micro screwdrivers. Oh, and you better wear the arc flash hood too since thermocouples are always energized and we wouldn't want it to arc and hurt you.
14. Wear arc flash suits when working on 125 VDC substation batteries and also add a rubber apron over the top of it.
15. Use the two man rule. One man does the job. The other makes sure that the boss isn't around while the work gets done.
16. As long as you put a breaker on a box that contains keys that belong to locks on various parts of the equipment installed by the helper in the production department following a sheet written by a production supervisor 10 years ago that worked in another department (or better yet the safety professional that was escorted around by the helper that just started last week), that meets OSHA requirements and you are totally safe as far as electrical lockout/tagout goes. Oh, and if you attempt to verify it or put your personal lock on the equipment yourself, you will be terminated and we'll smear your name for the next three jobs you try to get.
17. If anything goes wrong, we need to do an accident investigation and create more paperwork to fix the problem because that's where the problems lies.
18. Workers are paid to work. Managers are paid to think. Don't think, just get it done.
19. It gets hot in summer, cold in winter, and rains the rest of the time. Bad weather trumps wearing arc flash PPE.
20. You need to wear a face shield with a hood while working in a spot so narrow that normally even a hard hat won't fit.
21. Our linemen or electricians know more about how to do things safely than you do, so you are not allowed to touch anything at all. Oh and by the way, we have no idea why the equipment isn't working and that's why you're here to help us fix it.
22. Arc flash will not occur or will not escape with the doors closed.
23. Working on or repairing arc resistant equipment in any way voids the warranty. In fact even cutting knockouts or doing any other modification also voids the arc resistant properties, so this equipment can't be repaired or maintained any more.
24. Wear EH boots. This protects you against shock.
25. Wear dielectric boots. This protects you against shock.
26. Wear rubber gloves AND use insulated tools including hot sticks. This protects against shock and the gloves must be used with the tool that is insulated for well beyond the rated voltage.
27. Wear rubber gloves even to touch grounded metal panels such as operating disconnects and circuit breakers even on switchgear panels.
28. Stand on rubber mats to protect against electrical shock, even when they are soaked with water.
29. Ground continuity checkers/trips protect against electrical shock hazards. GFI's PREVENT electrical shocks from occurring.
30. Grounding causes trips and failures. Remove the system bonding jumper when this happens. In fact the best and safest systems are ungrounded so that we can keep running until the next shutdown to work on equipment that has failed.
31. That ground fault alarm has been going off for over 20 years and never caused a problem yet.
32. Safety professionals spend years learning how to keep you safe. They know more about safety than engineers and maintenance people, but can't change a light bulb in their offices.
33. As long as the arc flash shirt is basically covering some part of your body, modifications such as leaving the shirt unbuttoned or tied around your waist, or cutting the sleeves off, does not affect it's function. Same with tying the straps of bibs around your waist, leaving the legs unzipped, etc.
34. Always replace the dark tinted shield in the arc flash hoods and face shields with one of the clear grinding ones. Those dark ones don't protect against debris and they make it impossible to see wire colors or much of anything else so put the proper face shield in them like a good impact resistant one.
35. The company will not cover your injuries if you don't follow the safety rules under workman's compensation insurance because it will be your fault (see "employee at fault" check off box).
36. OSHA (or OH&S or CSA or NFPA) mandates 30 volts and below as the cutoff for shock protection.
37. Arc flash can happen with a 1.5 V battery.
38. Wear gloves, arc flash suit, etc., within 10 feet of any electrical equipment even if just walking by. It is inherently dangerous and your mere thinking about it could set it off.
39. Whatever is on the arc flash sticker is all you need to know for all tasks and all conditions in the plant.
40. All you need to do is put your lock on the box that was done by anyone. There is nothing extra that needs to be done just because it's an electrical task.
I could go on. These are real examples of stupid things that I've run into all over the place in real plants, especially in their safety training programs done by safety professionals and arc flash consultants. It's really hard to keep a straight face and/or spew their obviously wrong procedures back on some kind of certification quiz and bite my tongue but hey...I'm just a guest contractor so what do I know.
