Don't work live!

[Piratepete]

Hi Guys

Got a call the other day. Electrician in hospital. No power. Please help.

He was working on a 8 way 3 phase board and attempted to insert a single phase MCB without turning off the power first (trying to be helpful). Unfortunately he mispositioned the MCB and managed to short 2 phases with the securing screw. The resulting arc destroyed all the MCBs on that side and all of the busbar MCB tags bar one (11 of them) before blowing a 200 Amp supply fuse. The electrician suffered severe burns to his arms. His eyes were saved by his glasses.
Lesson learnt, I hope!

Pete

 

[davesparks]

Hope he's ok. As Pete says but for the grace of god. I regularly have to work live. I mainly work in banks now and my company can get fined for interuption to power. It's always in the back of your mind is today the day I make a mistake. We're only human after all..

Do you have suitable justification, training, method statements, tools, PPE and suchlike for the task?

The first question to ask is why an arranged shutdown cannot be carried out. Banks aren't open 24/7




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[davesparks]

In fairness all the guys are top notch(better tradesmen than me)All at least 20 years in the trade. But we are only human. The phone could ring and that simple distraction could do harm.

Then the plan/method statement is not suitable if a telephone which could ring is allowed in the working area.


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[Nolnoc]

We have training tools etc. And the paperwork takes longer than the job. It does be carried out as safe as possible and I'm not having a go at my company it's just the way it is.

We have scheduled shutdowns for planned works. But sometimes as you know things just happen that are business critical. We have all sorts of fancy words for get it done now.

The phone earlier was just an example and I think your in the ideal world there not the real one.

 

[davesparks]

We have training tools etc. And the paperwork takes longer than the job. It does be carried out as safe as possible and I'm not having a go at my company it's just the way it is.

We have scheduled shutdowns for planned works. But sometimes as you know things just happen that are business critical. We have all sorts of fancy words for get it done now.

The phone earlier was just an example and I think your in the ideal world there not the real one.

Well the way you presented it earlier suggesting that you are concerned that when you do work live it could go wrong sounds a lot like it doesn't get treated correctly.

The industry's I work in have all sorts of fancy words for get it done now, and an almost religious belief in the phrase 'the show must go on'. So I am well aware of that kind of pressure, but it sure as hell doesn't mean I will put my life at risk for the sake of it.

I do live in the real world, there's no reason not to switch your phone off when working on something live.


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[edexlab]

Trouble is it almost always takes an accident which costs a lot of money for companies to realise that they need to change practices,

I was involved in a job last year where a 30k piece of equipment got dropped on site luckily no one hurt except the concrete floor
and a proper procedure was implemented, as it was enough to get the directors twitching at the thought of jail time as it was through bad planning and practices being ignored due to Installation time pressure to get things done that caused the incident
It took a potentially fatal accident to make the necessary changes !
A lot of companies I've worked for allow workers to take the risk and because they get away with it a few times it then becomes a standard practice

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[BLBelfast]

I made a major mistake yesterday and got away with blurred vision and singhed arm hairs. And just a double pole mcb and two 80 amp fuses to replace.

Was replacing some old double pole mcbs feeding 3 apartments that were basically getting held together by insulating tape. Was swapping out the cables and first pulled all the load side tails out before looking to see where I could turn the supply off from. Assumed wrongly which ones were the load side. Cue the brown feed touching the black feed and blowing up in my face.

Been doing this 15 years and would actually regard myself as generally safe. Actually puked up once the shock had left me and I contemplated what could easily have happened.

I know a lot of you will rightly be reading this thinking what an idiot and your correct but shows what complacency can do.

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[Rpa07]

Respect for your honesty BLBelfast, you'll have to make it at least another 15 before the next one BUT hopefully we can all learn from that. I'm new to the whole game and I'm enjoying not trusting or assuming anything and obviously not having met a fraction of the work that you all have, safe work is safe work so I'll keep it up.
I keep hitting my head on things though - may have to wear a bump cap everywhere!


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[Marvo]

....I know a lot of you will rightly be reading this thinking what an idiot and your correct but shows what complacency can do.

Yeah, I confess, the idiot bit crossed my mind, more importantly though hopefully it crossed your mind as well and you got enough of a wake-up to change the way you do things. Complacency, laziness, disinterest, whatever it was, they're all dangerous traits that will get you killed. Please stay safe.

 

[Deleted member 9648]

Hi Guys

Got a call the other day. Electrician in hospital. No power. Please help.

He was working on a 8 way 3 phase board and attempted to insert a single phase MCB without turning off the power first (trying to be helpful). Unfortunately he mispositioned the MCB and managed to short 2 phases with the securing screw. The resulting arc destroyed all the MCBs on that side and all of the busbar MCB tags bar one (11 of them) before blowing a 200 Amp supply fuse. The electrician suffered severe burns to his arms. His eyes were saved by his glasses.
Lesson learnt, I hope!

Pete

Did exactly this in an old ottermill DB in a school, blew a 200a fuse in a field on the other side of the road. Wasn't hurt but realised how stupid I'd been.
But I'll wager every one of the experienced posters on here has done things equally stupid which could have resulted in death or injury. If anyone says they haven't I don't believe them.

 

[stevethesparks]

Its normally the complacency bit that gets you