All electrical work practices must comply with applicable sections of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), National Electrical Code, National Electrical Safety Code, and State adopted electrical codes.
Despite such regulation, there are about 1,000 accidents at work involving electric shocks or burns reported to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) each year. Around 30 of these turn out to be fatal, with poor working practices usually to blame for the incidents. Such practices suggest that the training and safety culture of the organisation isn’t right.
Training & safety culture
Electrical safety starts with being well-trained, knowledgeable, and informed, essentially ‘qualified’ to perform the work. Remember, being informed and knowledgeable in electrical safety must be a necessity at all levels. Every person who performs electrical maintenance and every supervisor or manager who is involved with maintenance technicians must be informed and must be able to engage in risk assessment. However it isn’t simply a matter of getting the training right, it’s about mindset too. Indeed when recruiting we look for people with a good safety as well as work ethic.
Individual training and safety practices alone cannot protect the electrical worker; it must be ingrained into the business culture as a whole. This is why at DragonIS we work hard to install a safety culture throughout the whole organisation. This starts with new staff – no matter what their role is within the organisation. Electrical technicians, of course, but also managers need to understand the possible injuries associated with electrical hazards in order to make safe choices about how to perform the work. If those in senior positions are not trained to recognise unsafe work practices, the unsafe work practices will be passed downwards, until there is the potential for an incident.
Such an ‘across the board’ approach is also important because our work is a team effort - workers need to feel comfortable in the knowledge that others are taking the same precautions as they are, and have the confidence to trust their colleagues.
HAZID study
In addition to this commitment of culture and training, we have a formalised approach for each of our projects. By definition each housing development or construction project is different, therefore the health and safety protocols have to adapt and almost be tailor made each time. To do this we perform a detailed and thorough HAZID study. This is a tool for hazard identification, used early on in the development’s ‘electricity design’ stage. The idea behind the HAZID study is to identify health and safety hazards during the early stages so that the identified issues can be ‘designed out’ or reduced to a minimum as the project progresses, ensuring working conditions are as safe as possible.
The HAZID study is in simple terms a risk assessment, which is used to identify the source of hazards that exist within the workplace during the construction phase of a project. To perform a HAZID we run a collective brainstorm session between all major parties involved within the project. This typically includes the designer, project management, client engineering disciplines, commissioning and operations personnel. The study parameters can be adapted to suit the severity of the task in relation to the project. Any identified risks are then removed or reduced to acceptable levels prior to construction by implementing suitable and innovative control measures.
The major findings and hazard ratings resulting from this process also help to deliver the necessary HSE compliance and form part of the project Risk Register required by the HSE under Construction Design and Management Regulations.
Such a HAZID review is very comprehensive – for instance some of the areas covered will include:
- Electrical Clearances (Isolation and separation of live conductive parts)
- Below Ground Services (Below ground cable strike, damage to personnel and equipment underground)
- Earthing (Electrocution, Rise or Earth Potential)
- Testing and Commissioning (Safety from the system & working on live parts)
- Structures (Climbing structures, electrocution & falls)
- Site Location (deliveries, traffic movement & access for pedestrians)
- Layout Design (Lifting, unloading & existing live site restrictions)
- Environmental (Protected species, contaminations & Control of spillages)
- Personal hazards (Slip, trips, falls & strain)
- Hot Works (Welding and grinding)
- Civil Works / Excavations (Falling into exposed trenches and contaminated grounds)
- Crane Work (Lifting and slewing)
- Working at Height / Confined Spaces (Falls from height & entrapment)
This process assists DragonIS in its desire to eradicate accidents on a project by project basis but also every time we conduct a HAZID we learn something new and thereby drives up standards throughout the business.
Conclusion
Although health and safety measures have reduced the fatality count in construction from an average of 53 over the last five years to 39 in 2012/13, five percent of these fatalities are still due to poor electricity practices. That is why my last piece of advice would be to never stop learning, constantly review your processes and always work at your safety culture – in our business a good work ethic and safety ethic go hand in hand.
Simon Phipps is CEO of Dragon Infrastructure Solutions, one of the UK’s largest independent connections providers.
