Lone Working 400v

[oscar.maskell]

Hi

Might be a strange question but does any one know if officially you need 2 men to work on 400v systems

Some sites recommend it some enforce it and some say no single men are fine providing they are deemed a competent person

Is there an official answer to this one?

 

[philbas]

I'm not an expert on this, but I would think it depends on your risk assement.

I have worked for a company that decided it was to risky for one office worker to work in the building alone.

What you have to consider is if some thing goes wrong, and that may not be electrical, (heart attackk, stroke) who is there to help.

I don't think there is a black and white answer, but if it goes wrong someone will be in court.

I'm sure Sidy will be along with more facts soon

 

[Evans Electric]

Sidey will know this .

1) Are we to assume that you are working live for some reason ?

2) I don't think you should working in some big empty building alone whatever you are doing TBH.

3) When you say single men are fine if competent ....does this rule out married men ?

 

[oscar.maskell]

Just as a general rule, Example hotel testing 3 phase board live and dead tests obviously people from hotel are about but you go on site on your own fully qualified spark what's the score

 

[revjames]

The issue is working alone, in some environments its hard not to. I often go to remote places on my own to work. Not much you can do about it. Some RAMS say you should phone in every 30 mins. what happens if you don't? nothing......

 

[CTID]

Where I have worked in the past, all lone workers had to have a hourly contractor check, normally visual. During nights or remote places during day it was an hourly check call made by the worker on site. If call was missed in a ten minute either side window, the supervisors would ring up and give you a telling off

A lot can happen in an hour though :-/

 

[M107]

I have to make hourly contact if lone working on installations at stations, if I dont call in at the indicated time I get a call to my mobile & pager from control & if I dont answer somebody is despatched asap to me.

 

[Sidewinder]

This is a complex area, H&S normally is!

If you are I&T'ing an install with no info, and no records, how do you know it is safe to even open any boards up live?

So you would have to de-energise, remove the board covers then re-energise as per 2330 etc.

Else you would be in breach of EAWR.

It is not a question with a cut & dried answer, and not one that can be answered in a few forum posts.

Personally, I would never allow anyone to work live, or test live unless they were competent and then never without a "competent safety man" to be there with them & a means of communications to the EM services independent of the site you were working at.

 

[Andy™]

if i think its necessary, ill take a second person with me, but most of the time its just me & the customer or another trade

 

[oscar.maskell]

Cheers for the advise guys another bag if worms I think

 

[Evans Electric]

I'll give a couple of examples from before the present H&S regime , so has no bearing other than to focus the mind.

(a) When I was an apprentice there was a thing about sparks going out to jobs alone in case they met with an accident. This was solved ,usually ,with guys going out to small one man type jobs always having an apprentice with them ( Man & mate) This seemed to be an unwritten law (other than Day Release day) .

As electrician's wages began to increase to a decent level , this arrangement was gradually forgotten .

(B) The other example ,which I've posted before I think, came when we were working on major developments to a Worcestershire sewerage plant. All the pumping and control panels were supplied by someone like Brush and their commisioning engineer was on site .

Electricians and civils finished Friday for the weekend , engineer worked on alone .

On Monday morning he was found slumped behind a panel, three marks on his forehead from where he had leaned into the panel,and touched the studs of a 3 phase connection . No idea when it happened ,could have been Friday night, thankfully I had gone elsewhere that Monday.

 

[Manator]

Many years ago whilst working on a 3 phase supply I had requested a 10 minute window for a shut down to connect a new supply, initially this was granted and the changeover was to take place at 13.00hrs, however when the time came it was again not possible. We had 6 electricians on site who would have had to go home if the changeover did not take place, I decided to do the changeover live.

I fitted myself out with a safety harness and attached a rope to the harness and had my poor apprentice hold the rope just in case anything happened with strict instructions to pull like mad if I messed up.

Needless to say I did the switch live, but watching my apprentice weee all over the floor scarred me for life and I now never ever work live, unless it is a safe working practice.

My apprentice has his own company now and is in his 30's, and every time we meet this is the first topic of conversation.

Now? I always have two men working live 3 phase.

 

[revjames]

"if its not safe don't do it that way" - Rio Tinto safety slogan.... I have to say I agree with it

 

[batty]

I really luckily don't have to work live but have worked on quite a few three phase installations alone but as these are not live don't see this as a problem. When I had a couple of board changes in a factory to do I had my son on one occasion and daughter on the other to keep an eye out as this was all in singles in trunking and none of it was marked. I was very concerned that a cable could come live so needed the reassurance if something were to go wrong they could isolate the supply. Luckily this was not needed but I certainly would not do that job without somebody keeping an eye.