#72 Electrical Safety: A Shockingly Fresh Take On Training, Programs & Inspections

We've all seen the boiler-plate electrical safe work practice & electrical awareness training.  This isn't that.  In this episode, we're challenging your program, what's covered in training, who gets training, and even your routine safety inspections to give you a fresh way to view electrical safety at your facility.  If this helped you, please support us by liking and sharing the episode and thank you for listening!  Full episode description below:

This episode dives deep into common electrical hazards overlooked during inspections and audits, highlighting critical gaps in personal protective equipment (PPE), voltmeter use, and general facility maintenance. By emphasizing real-world scenarios, the hosts discuss how to strengthen electrical safety programs through collaborative efforts with electricians, maintenance and utilities departments. The episode is packed with actionable advice and key insights for improving electrical safety.

Key Points:
1. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) Gaps:
 Improper use of arc flash clothing and untrained staff wearing non-rated clothing.
Specific Concerns: Workers rolling up sleeves, incorrectly washing arc flash clothing, and mismatches in PPE due to gaps in supply and policy oversight.

2. Voltmeter Training and Misuse:
Untrained or insufficiently trained personnel using voltmeters improperly, leading to dangerous arcing incidents.
Training Gaps: Inconsistent policies on who should use voltmeters and when they should check for power.

3. Environmental Hazards in Electrical Rooms:
Water and Corrosion: MCC rooms often have water ingress issues due to poor drainage, condensation, or wet cleanup areas.
Impact: Water and chemical exposure can cause equipment failures and create shock hazards.

4. Dust and Explosive Risks:
Dust accumulation near electrical equipment (e.g., mills, conveyor systems) increases fire risk from ignition sources such as motors, bearings etc.

5. Safety Program Ownership:
 Many safety programs are unclear and too vague or overly complex, with safety teams managing areas outside their expertise resulting in programs outlining processes the facility does not actually do.

6. Importance of Accurate Labeling:
Incorrect labeling of electrical panels and disconnects can lead to dangerous situations where hazard levels are misunderstood.

7. Collaborative Risk Assessments:
Engage electricians, maintenance staff, and safety teams in collaborative reviews and risk assessments tailored to specific locations.

Keywords:
Electrical safety hazards
PPE gaps in electrical work
Voltmeter safety training
Lockout/tagout electrical safety
Arc flash protection
MCC room maintenance
Electrical hazard inspections
Housekeeping for electrical safety
Dust explosion prevention
Industrial electrical safety program

This video is intended for educational purposes.  Solutions offered are not designed to take the place of an attorney or medical professional, and should not be taken as legal or medical advice.  It is recommended that viewers consult a safety consultant, medical provider or an occupational safety legal team as applicable to help navigate their specific circumstances.  

  Specific job tasks shown are being completed by trained professionals, and should not be attempted without proper training and equipment under the supervision of a professional.  Viewer discretion is advised.

Transcript

Electrical Safety and Hazards Discussion

Speaker 1 0:00

today's episode. I think it's coming out around valentine's day, so I'm just doing my part okay, all the shock and all that's what I'm going for with my today electrical hazards here we go, that's the day welcome back, happy february yeah, electrical hazards, electrical safety, whatever you want to call it was.

Speaker 2 0:25

People ask about this, all right. So first one is I'm wearing a beautiful art class shirt Because the clothing's one of the biggest ones we see. Clothing's one of the biggest ones we see. Or they want to wear this thick art class shirt, 100 degrees and they never do electrical all day.

Speaker 1 0:40

Yep, then they have a heat stroke so you gotta look at the ppe.

Speaker 2 0:44

I'm wearing a dry fit underneath the shirt okay did you get promoted? Again? My dry fit. We appreciate you, but that drive is not flesh rated. And if you don't have the pullover or you don't have something else, yeah, there's your gaps. So we start. We're seeing more and more ppe gaps.

Speaker 1 1:01

I'm just going there right quick and look at that, or I'm just gonna walk to walk by.

Speaker 2 1:04

That's great. I'm going to validate it, or whatever.

Speaker 1 1:06

Yeah, evaluate what's going on, just check on things.

Speaker 2 1:09

You got to make sure the clothes are right. We've also seen where people will get issued art flash clothing on a Monday because they're new. All the other uniforms will take two weeks, so they take that one home every night and what if there's a special way that it needs to be treated or not treated?

Speaker 1 1:23

what can be used to clean it or not, but they're doing job shadowing every day.

Speaker 2 1:27

People don't let to go work. That's why they have the arc flash clothing. So that's what's our kind of weird one. To start with, you got to watch your pp yep and uh please please. Oh, why'd you roll yours up? Because it's hot out today well, because I like cheetah okay uh, but my policy for arc flash just says you need to have it on, yeah, so. So how did you end up getting burned? You're wearing it, wearing arc flash. I bought it. I gave it to you because our policy didn't say folded down.

Speaker 1 1:51

Maybe the gloves only go to here, yeah.

Speaker 2 1:53

Your policy didn't say folded down button. Those are your quick PPE gaps.

Speaker 1 1:57

Absolutely Well, I've got more. No idea what he's going to cover, so we'll see if he gets all of them let's talk about uh, it's a voltmeter hazard for electrical safety and me. Yeah, we've been using it.

Speaker 2 2:10

Yeah, we've seen yeah, we've seen people do it right in front of us yeah, I've had training, I know what's going on and I turn literally around to keep managing the drill.

Speaker 1 2:19

I think they've got it and I'm gonna let them do their role. Something shiny happens like well, that's not how you use that. That's not the. It should not arc when you test for power volt meter training.

Speaker 2 2:32

Yeah right, style, how to take for known source all that kind of stuff? You gotta have some training on it yeah, well, and so here's the other.

Speaker 1 2:39

Let's just tie this in really quick with last week, where we said trends right. We said trends of procedures were a gap lockout, specifically. A lot of times we'll say oh, you need to check for power, how am I using? A volt meter, and that's where this comes in. We have folks that don't have electrical training using volt meters because we are requiring them to check for power and there may not be another means to do it.

Speaker 2 2:59

that not everything has a push button right, or or our policy just says we're not sure when you got to use the meter, I'm not sure when you got to use the glove, or we don't say anything, or we don't say anything at all. So you got to figure it out. You got to. Oh, is it under 50 volts or 50 volts? You shouldn't have to figure that out.

Speaker 2 3:15

To wear it, and who needs to be trained is something that we do need to have, so that's another gap because you could also say well, I'm a machine operator, or I'm a utilities person, I'm a refrigeration person.

Speaker 1 3:26

We only allow electricians to use volt meters. That's great. So am I just standing down?

Speaker 2 3:31

Yeah.

Speaker 1 3:32

And what is that doing to my downtime and based on how many electricians I have to get to what, wherever that person is, quickly? Are we really just giving them a incentive to not lock out, not check for power, which is not great when we talk about specifically within our industry on the ag side and the meat production side, where we wash everything down?

Speaker 2 3:56

Also there's another one Everything's wet, everything's wet. It seems like where we go. So if it's, wet, it's fail.

Speaker 1 4:03

Stuff in there, kind of melts together and they have been known to fail.

Speaker 2 4:07

Yeah, chemicals.

Speaker 1 4:08

You just eat them up. They corrode. Yeah, I mean we wash everything down on a meat plant floor with corrosives every night. But you think about how many you can say well, we know what, we bag, it put back, we put bags on it and that's great.

Speaker 2 4:21

That does I think help a little bit, it still gets condensation.

Speaker 1 4:24

It's condensation, Every. Why are we wiping condensation?

Speaker 2 4:28

Put a chlorine puck in there and not worry about it.

Speaker 1 4:30

Oh, we could.

Speaker 2 4:31

That way it deteriorates. That way it deteriorates and we have issues sometimes with that yes absolutely so it's a wet. What's the next category? So the wet is one. We see a lot where people stand in something and they'll have, or they'll get wet and they go do a task. Your clothing is wet, you've got to go change now.

Speaker 1 4:48

In the morning sweeping out with a squeegee out of mcc rooms because correct there's so much water all the water came in and there was no lift all right.

Speaker 2 4:56

Another one is the mills. You got to have a good housekeeping program. I don't mean housekeeping like it makes you feel good and we're gonna clear once while. I mean like a real one yeah so.

Speaker 1 5:07

So yeah, not everyone is required to have certain levels.

Speaker 2 5:15

But you can have dust in a mill, you can have dust in a farm, you can have dust in a spice room. I mean there's a lot of different things you can have. So housekeeping for the electrical.

Speaker 1 5:25

So even if explosion proof stuff does not pertain to you, there is still an increased likelihood when you have a lot of dust particulates or product particulates in the air right that fires can occur, and this is including anything even that's outside, but the equipment is enclosed.

Speaker 2 5:46

So I'm thinking of like enclosed conveyors here well, you can get stuff with bearing equipment that moves product and it gets one little hole in the guarding. Now all that product piles up around the motor, yeah, around the shaft seals absolutely well, all right. And then my last one here is um, is the program real? See a lot of programs and we're like it's real thin for electrical with these massive, really thick, and no one really knows what's in it. You got to make the program what you can actually do and you got to tell people hey, this is what our rules are here.

Speaker 1 6:19

Yeah, so this is going to make all the safety people probably really excited when, I say this, but AB Electrical, you're just a stakeholder in managing that program.

Speaker 2 6:27

Let maintenance manage it. Yeah, maybe it really the electrician engineering electrical department.

Speaker 1 6:33

It needs to lie with them. If you have maintenance and utilities, maybe you're just a stakeholder and you advise and support and you work together with them, but you don't own that program, correct, and so you kind of turn over some of that to them. Now again, you want to work with them, you want to make sure it makes sense, you want to make sure that they're getting their gloves changed out and all of those inspections are happening, but you don't have a really, really in-depth understanding of the electrical system at your facility.

Speaker 1 7:04

The electrical in general may be better and actually safer to have that program live with someone else in terms of the review and the update and making sure that it's reflecting what you're actually doing, as well as current fpa 70 standards a lot of people say we're not really sure as to how our contractor.

Speaker 2 7:21

There's nothing wrong with that. We've seen failures with the contractor side. So when we talk about program, we mean like how you're going to manage it there? Yeah, what's your checks and balances?

Speaker 1 7:32

Who is qualified, who's not qualified? Who's getting training? Who's getting the PPE? What kind of PPE? Where do they need to stand? Who's even doing the labeling of the stickers in the MCC?

Speaker 1 7:41

room that's correct and do they have a clue of what's going on? I know a lot of locations want to save money by doing that, but if you don't have a qualified person that really knows what's going on doing that, it makes it hard to read those one lines. They don't really know what they're looking at. And now you've got stuff that's labeled dangerous. That's not. And you've got stuff labeled as a cat zero that actually should be labeled dangerous and it's just very chaotic and confusing. Yeah, that's.

Speaker 2 8:06

That's not great either so electrical safety, a little bit of arc flash, a little bit of floors, a little bit ppe, some volt. You just gotta look at your program.

Speaker 1 8:13

Yeah, you got to really take time overhaul, because I think, that's one that a lot of safety folks it kind of gets pushed over there like yeah like we, that's not necessarily most safety folks core, you know, competency, along with, like the psm side. It's like the electrical and PSM stuff we're just going to shove over here and kind of right. And so maybe just really sit down with the, the other affected people at your location. Like I said, utilities, they're the experts, electricians, they're the experts. And together in a room. Just sit down in a room together and just work through it.

Speaker 2 8:46

These are our opinions and just work through it. These are our opinions.

Speaker 1 8:49

These are our opinions. Do a thorough risk assessment of what makes sense to your location. These are our opinions, so take it for what?

Worker Safety Podcast Promotion

Speaker 1 8:54

you want. If you want more support, the evaluations I don't love the word audit because it's not really what we do and if you want a safety audit, a safety evaluation, some baseline information on where you are, wwwhelen-safetycom is a great resource. We walk you through real life solutions that you can actually do. This is not going to be an evaluation sitting in an office. We don't do that. So all floor-based production, area-based, and then otherwise. If person stuff's not in the budget, this year head over to allensafetycoachingcom. Got over a hundred different videos for training over there. That's a great resource and you also get free email-based coaching with Joe and I, so that's a huge incentive. So if you want some support but tight's not in the budget, that's a great in-between to kind of help get you through. And until next time.

Speaker 2 9:39

Thank you for being part of our channel. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 1 9:43

We appreciate it. So take care everybody. Have a safe week and we'll see you next time. Thank you for listening to Safe, efficient, profitable a worker safety podcast. If you're looking for more in-depth discussions or step-by-step solutions on all of the different safety and regulatory topics, please visit us at wwwallensafetycoachingcom for web-based virtual coaching and training, or at wwwallensafetycom to book our team for onsite services. Training sessions to order merchandise, to learn more about our team and what services. Thank you so much for your support. Thank you.