Electrical accidents can cause serious harm to people and equipment. While everyone knows working with electricity involves risks, it’s important to follow good isolation practices to keep them to a minimum.
Why is electrical isolation necessary?
Making sure electrical equipment and circuits are ‘dead’ protects people and assets from harm during electrical installation and maintenance. The key is to have good procedures to confirm there’s no electrical current before starting work.
Example:
The Health and Safety Executive gives an example of an electrician injured following early activation of a new distribution board.
The circuit breaker was not securely isolated and was on as he stripped insulation from cabling. He touched the live wire, resulting in electrocution. Replacing the cover and switching off and locking the circuit breakers for unfinished circuits would have prevented the incident. Reconnection to the circuit brakers should not have taken place until work was complete and tested.
Good electrical isolation practice
To keep electricians and other people in the area safe there’s a basic step by step process:
isolation from electrical circuits
locking off the equipment and circuits to make sure they can’t be reconnected
labelling to make sure everyone knows electrical work is in progress.
A risk assessment is important to identify how to make sure isolation is in place before work starts. This should answer these questions:
Can the necessary work take place with all sources of electricity dead?
Will anyone have to enter the area while work is in progress?
Are safeguards already in place?
Are procedures already in place?
Are those carrying out the work competent and supervised?
Are there any related risks?
Once work is complete, safe re-testing is important before start-up.
The ALIVE campaign helps people follow five important steps to maintain electrical safety.
A – Using approved equipment that meets UK safety standards is the first step.
L – Identifying the point of isolation, locking it off and clearly displaying warning tags.
I – Initial prove testing of the voltage indicator (VI) against the proving unit to make sure it’s working properly.
V – Voltage testing using the VI to confirm whether dangerous voltage levels are present.
E – Ensuring it’s safe to start work by proving and re-testing the VI against the proving unit to ensure it’s still functioning.
Please get in touch if you would like to discuss safe electrical installation and maintenance with the MSE team.
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