This weeks’ question is a follow up regarding finding deficiencies in an electrical system when performing an arc flash study.
Select up to 3 answers

When deficiencies are found during a study, what do you believe is the appropriate follow up action?

-Document in report
-Solution(s) recommended
-Deficiency is corrected
-Other action – please explain
-Nothing

Since I work for the Owner (we do our own studies), I don't really do reports per se but I voted the first 3 choices as we have had consultants do the studies on a few of our buildings.

When I find issues I get them resolved. I would expect the consultant to make recommendations and then update the report when we resolved the issues. From my limited experience with consultants they are poor at this (making recommendations). They just recommended we replace everything without lifting a finger to look for other solutions like series ratings, artificially increasing conductor length, adding J fuses or whatever. There are usually a few things you can do before you get to the "replace everything" option that may be cheaper and/or requires less or no down time.

"Replace everything" sounds good and is the easy way out for the consultant but not if you have to shut a building down for days at a six-figure cost to make it happen.

This is my favorite editorial cartoon. So good, I had to post it twice:

lol the picture says it all
But we have some smart consultants on this forum, who can change the last sentence to "I'd say the victim was probably NOT a consultant."

I shouldn't be so harsh on them I guess. After all, I used to be one myself! Prior to consulting I worked for an electrical contractor. I got my journeyman and master electricians and contractors licenses in 1993 and my PE in 1997.

After I "went inside" to facilities engineering at a university and had to live with my designs I realized I had to improve as an engineer and designer. When you're the one paying the bills and living with the consequences of poor designs, often for years, it changes your mindset.

When I tell consultants we don't use ultrasonic or dual tech occ sensors because they interfere badly with some of our hearing impaired student's hearing aids they say they've never heard of that problem and don't believe me. It's true. 100% true. I've seen some students in tears over it and could hear the feedback from their hearing aids while standing several feet away.

When I tell them not to allow conduit within floor slabs because we've had too many issues with cutting and coring into live circuits down the road they say why don't you just x-ray all your slabs? Yeah, right. Why don't YOU x-ray all our slabs Mr. Consultant.



When I tell them we don't require the typical boilerplate solid #12 like their specs say because it is a pain and nobody uses it when given the choice to use stranded they say they've never heard that stranded was easier to stuff in an outlet box.

When I tell them requiring rigid / not allowing EMT on feeders in a classroom building in a typical academic building mechanical room is overkill they ask why? That is their standard. I say because it is overkill and expensive and we won't be running rigid in there in future and no fork trucks are going to run into that EMT feeder above the corridor ceiling. Ever. One supposed EE I worked with didn't even know the difference between Rigid, IMC and EMT.

When I tell them we must have 3 equivalent manufacturers listed for the light fixtures on large projects to ensure competition between the agencies and tell them we'll pay double or triple the real cost to the tune of $100,000's of thousands of dollars if we don't they don't believe me. (The agencies put lighting packages together in my state, not the supply houses and if they think they are "locked in" look out!).

When I tell them to make sure we have "more than normal" / adequate spare breakers in all switchboards and panelboards because the breakers are cheap when bought now vs later they argue and don't believe I can buy a whole new panel loaded up in most cases for less than I can a single breaker later on because the gear reps think they have competition on the new panel but don't have on a single I-line or whatever breaker later. Same deal their as the light fixtures. We get gouged. Badly.

When I tell the consultants to put a general note on the drawings requiring the contractor to include a certain number extra devices to be located later on a new building or major renovation (receps, exit signs, smokes, horn/strobes, comm outlets, small equipment connections etc.) during construction they scoff at the idea. I say I can buy those recepts with the bid for $200 per now or $1200 via change order later with a whole lot more paperwork. Same with temperature control points. We always have to add some recepts, or a smoke detector, or a comm outlet here or there that was missed during design.



And last, but not least, when I tell the consultant THEY are required to build the power distribution model DURING DESIGN based around a basis of design manufacturer to ensure they have adequate AIC ratings and to attempt to keep IE under 8 cal and then update it as an as-built with actual OCP and feeder lengths etc. and NOT to pawn this off on the contractor they whine about it because they are used to forcing the contractor to do it who subs it to the gear guys who have never seen the job and it will undoubtedly be messed up and have to be re-done after I look at it.

Oh, I could go on all day with this.

I would expect the consultant to make recommendations and then update the report when we resolved the issues.

So Mister Owner, You press the consultant for a lump sum price, give limited help or support and you want him to update the report months after you get around to doing something? JIM

No but speaking as an end user, the lump sum price should include establishing mitigation goals such as recommendations to get everything to say 10 cal/cm2. Almost all the arc flash studies I've seen gather data (and they desperately want to bill as much as possible for this) but simply don't do anything beyond plugging the data into a software package and producing a report, and perhaps a stack of stickers. I wouldn't hesitate to pay for updates after we do the recommendations and maybe I'm different in that I actually want a copy of the data so that I can simply update/print out various views. But that's not what I get and most consultants try to flee/run away/scare me away with a huge price whenever this becomes a requirement.

Yes, I do. I specified as much in the RFQ. All I'm asking for is to get what I paid for. As far as limited support goes, I give them all the drawings we have which are generally 95% + accurate but I do tell them it is their responsibility to verify, the original shop drawings and O&M manuals for all the electrical equipment, a man with keys to take them around and through the buildings who knows where the equipment is to help them with their survey, the available fault current at the main pad mount primary, the OCP in the pad mount primary and more.

I get the issues fixed as quickly as possible and tell them to hold off on the final report until I fix them. To update the model in those cases is generally a few clicks of the mouse and changing a few OCP's. Not much work. In a couple of more major "fixes" I DID tell them up front I recognized this was extra work, asked them for a fee proposal and paid them the extra.