This question still comes up from time to time. Do people perform studies in house or hire outside consultants and contractors. Perhaps you are a consultant or contractor. I hear pros and cons of both sides of the issue.

Here is this week's question:

Who performs your arc flash study(s)?

We do it in house
We hire an outside consultant/contractor
We are the consultant/contractor
We haven't conducted a study yet
Something else

The paper mill I work for used to hire out to a consulting firm to do the analysis, but after I started here I purchased a copy of SKM Power*Tools for the mill, and rebuilt their model and started doing arc flash studies myself.

Starting in 2003 I conducted a number of arc flash studies for my clients. I highly suggested that they do as voltrael is doing and using SKM PTW, ETAP, EasyPower or other programs to not only find their arc flash values but to keep an active document of their facility's electrical systems. Gone should be the days of an electrician scribbling notes on paper to be sitting in a pile at the drafting dept. The results were often rife with errors and missing information. And this method was quite time consuming as well. Very very few of the clients followed through. But those who did are quite pleased with this system rather than having all the drawing cabinets of old out of date and missing schematics.

A hybrid approach similar to what CarlM suggested often works well. Many facilities do not have employees that are skilled at power system modeling and analysis, however going through the process of training someone is usually beneficial for large industrial plants. Once the plant employees learn to do the analysis often they do not have time available to do significant modeling associated with large projects, so they hand the model off to a consultant then take ownership of the updated model at the end of the project.

As a consultant, I've come across customers with different approaches to this, some doing in house 100%, some contracting 100% and some doing a combination.

I see some vulnerability in a plant outsourcing 100% and leaving their plant reliability decisions in the hands of a consulting firm that may not be aware of their operating history. It works well if the consultant is in a long term relationship and has developed an arc flash (and system protection) scheme over the years

I see MUCH vulnerability if a plant thinks they are saving money by including arc flash analysis with capitol improvement work, each consultant having a slightly different approach or philosophy, with the possibility of inconsistent system protection
that is difficult to document for troubleshooting and maintenance.

I also see some vulnerability in loading this work on top of a maintenance or project engineer in house, who has limited time and will probably never accumulate the experience a specialist might have, to think through selective coordination.