There's no question that electrical safety is a complicated topic. With so many different types of activities and hazards, it can be very catastrophic if not managed appropriately. That’s why it’s so important to have a clear understanding of all the nuances to ensure the safety of your employees. Understanding the overlap and differences between electrical safety and lockout tagout safety is a prime example.
Oftentimes, the terms “lock out” and “electrical safety” get confused – and that can impact everything from policies and procedures to knowing who is responsible for doing the work.
Lockout refers to the mechanical isolation of hazardous energy on a piece of equipment ensuring it gets to a zero energy state. Any equipment with two or more hazardous energies present requires specific, written lockout procedures based on the OSHA standard .147 and Canada's CSA-Z460.
When you’re dealing with electrical safety, such as work on an electrical panel, you are not required to have a lockout procedure due to electricity being a single source of hazardous energy. However, you will need to have an electrical safety protocol guiding your overall electrical activities with any specific electrical task. These guidelines are governed by the NFPA 70E as well as OSHA 29 CFR Subpart S and CSA-Z462 requirements (if your business operates in Canada).
There can also be confusion over who is qualified to conduct service and maintenance activities within an electrical device or panel. At times, organizations have a very small group of designated maintenance employees responsible for everything within a facility – from servicing a piece of equipment from a mechanical standpoint to conducting electrical work within a panel. If that person is not specifically trained to do electrical work, there’s a significant increase in the potential for incidents or fatalities as a result of things like arc flash or electrical shock. The importance of having the right person for the job or task is crucial.
For lockout, we are generally talking about “authorized individuals.” These are employees who have been given approval by the organization and trained based on .147 to shut down a piece of equipment according to that specific equipment’s lockout procedure. Not only should authorized individuals be trained on their role and responsibility to .147, but specific practical training for the unique policies and procedures that are particular to an organization's environment, equipment, and process for each piece of equipment they will encounter.
Proper training is what helps keep your employees safe so it’s important to understand when specialized training is required. Whether it’s for lockout or electrical safety, you need to be aware of what equipment is being worked on, what type of task is being done, who is doing it, and what type of hazards are present. Once you assess these essential pieces of information, then you can accurately determine the type of training necessary. Training should be customized to each organization and specific to the type of equipment based on the tasks and responsibilities being asked of your employees.
If you are a company with limited internal resources, it’s important to note that there are third-party options available to help you safely perform many of these tasks. Master Lock has the experience to help you keep your people safe and your business compliant – from evaluating your program and writing policies and procedures to helping you maintain your program moving forward.
If you are interested in learning more about Master Lock Professional Safety Services visit our website.
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There is an important relationship that exists between lockout and electrical safety.
To ensure compliance under .147, hazardous energy sources, such as electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, chemical and thermal energy, need to be properly isolated to a zero-energy state through a series of shutdown steps documented by a lockout procedure.
The above-mentioned hazardous energies have dangers that need to be controlled to prevent mechanical motion through power generation or residual pressures during service and maintenance activities. However, electrical hazards have an additional piece of the puzzle that needs to be taken into consideration for isolation—the electricity itself.
Not only do electrical hazards exist as power generation to provide mechanical motion, it is the electricity itself that needs to be controlled and isolated within individual power installations such as disconnect panels, knife switches, MCC breaker panels, and circuit breaker panels.
There is an important relationship that exists between lockout and electrical safety. Lockout is required and used as a control measure to keep a worker safe, and electrical safe work practices need to be respected and followed prior to servicing or maintenance on electrical panels. The relationship between qualified electrical workers and Authorized lockout personnel follows the same path but diverge in different directions when an electrical installation is open to perform work. That’s where the Authorized Person’s job ends, and the qualified electrical workers begins.
Qualified vs. Authorized Personnel
Lockout is the practice of isolating hazardous energy to a piece of machinery to prevent the mechanical motion of critical components and the flow of dangerous energy such as air, chemicals, water. Isolating hazardous energy such as gravity, compressed springs, and thermal energy also play a significant role as they are identified as hazardous energy on a piece of equipment. To ensure these hazardous energy sources are isolated, an equipment specific lockout procedure is required to be followed. The identification and lockout of these hazardous energy sources can be done by personnel who have been trained by organizations as Authorized Personnel.
The limitations of Authorized Personnel start once activities go beyond shutting off isolating devices, such as gate valves ball valves, disconnects, circuit breakers, or blocking the motion of components and bleeding off residual air or hydraulic pressure. They are solely trained to conduct servicing and maintenance activities on a piece of machinery to isolate the mechanical motion and not those activities within electrical installations that contain live electricity. Those workers who have been trained, or have the skill, experience, training, and authorization by their organization to perform tasks within electrical installations containing live power are designated a Qualified Electrical Worker.