Does anyone have any brilliant ideas about how to ensure the main power switch remains off when someone is working on the wiring? The switch is inside a metal box that is locked with a padlock. When the wiring is being worked on, a warning sign saying "LEAVE OFF" is locked into the padlock, together with the name of the electrician and his mobile phone number. Dozens of people have keys to this padlock, as they need to switch the power on each morning and off each night. Unfortunately some are not very observant and don't notice the warning sign. The electrician was rather lucky to notice when the power came on again. I suppose that temporarily changing the padlock would be a start. However some people are known to use bolt cutters on padlocks when they feel they are entitled to open them.
Perhaps another metal box with a flush lock could be placed over the existing box.
Any other ideas? It's too late to sack a moron after the electrician is dead.
Changing the padlock when the electrician is about will mean people have to think about why they can't get into the box, which means they will get to read the sign. Also, make your sign more obvious : "Electrician working, do not touch" is better than just "Leave off".
The sign would stop pretty much anybody getting the bolt croppers.
Also, who has keys to the padlock? You ought to be able to contact them - do so. If you can't, time to revisit your systems.
A circuit breaker lockout kit. This has a lockout hasp with multiple holes. Each hole takes a padlock, each electrician has a personal padlock. Each person working on that circuit adds their padlock to the hasp. When they finish their job they remove their padlock. When all the padlocks have gone the hasp is removed and the power is switched back on. To guard against fuckwittery (going home and forgetting to remove a padlock) the gaffer has a master key which fits all of the padlocks so if things do get forgotten the gaffer can remove the offending padlock(s).
This needs some discipline and a procedure to follow in the event of a forgotten padlock/lost key.
Forgot to add - if this is at a place of work (implied by "sack a moron"), boltchoppers on that padlock = H+S breach = bollocking/sacking. If you've got staff who will consider doing that, you need to seriously clamp down on them.
think he should have his own special lock. If I'm helping him I'd be inclined to short the live wire to earth and have some kind of indicator near where we are working to show if the wiring becomes live. That may not be easy with 600v DC when there's no earth for 6 metres.
This is a bit scary. Where are these padlocks chopped off frequently, and why?
Depends on what relationship you have with them. If it's employee, it's "you're fired if you break these rules". If they don't understand that, it's "you're fired for being too dangerous".
Well, yeah, I can see that. But if it's a place of work, "how do we make them be observant and follow the rules" is important. If you've seriously got staff who will crop a padlock on a well-signed electrical installation, and you can't train them not to, you need to fire them. This is HSE-type stuff - they'll get heavy on you if you don't get heavy on staff for this sort of basic thing.
is what you should put on the padlock. It is 12 inches X 12 inches (300mm X 300mm) and highly visible, so people can see it without to much problem. If they say they didn't see it, then sack them for not having proper sight correction ( spectacles or glasses ) in a place of employment.
Electricians must use their own padlock and key, and not one provided by anyone on the premises, for which there could be other keys which are not under the electrician's control. Your electrician should already know this.
You need to go to higher management. Board of Directors if necessary. Serve a notice on them that their lower management are flagrantly breaking H&S law.
If you cannot be reasonably sure that your lock-off devices will not be tampered with then you must have a person (or two people and a dog, if that's what it takes) present at the isolator location at all times to supervise against this, in contact with you to warn you if the power is ever likely to be reinstated. You must have a safe system of work.
If management will not pay for this then you refuse to work.
If anyone damages your electrician's lock-off device then report them immediately to the police for criminal damage and also to the HSE.
Assuming that protective devices will clear a large fault current in the way you expect, and always safely, is not smart. For example, you might find that the earth fault loop impedance is too high (possibly due to electrician working on earthing), and rather than the fault clearing, all earthed metalwork becomes live, which is a serious electrocution risk to anyone on the premises, and a risk of multiple fires starting in obscure places.
In the US, it's not uncommon for lazy electricians to identify the breaker for a circuit by shorting the circuit out and seeing which one trips. This technique is responsible for a number of building fires.
You seem to have a systemic failure. You can't really legislate for this. If the management are so appallingly unconcerned about health and safety that they would bolt-crop the padlock off even though there was a large sign telling them not to for a good reason, then you basically need to call the HSE for advice.
In the interim:
Refuse to work on the equipment at all and advise anybody else who may work on the equipment that they take their life in their hands. Make it a big issue that everybody knows about, so nobody can ignore it, especially management. You're under no obligation to put your life at risk in this way. A lack of significant action by management would constitute constructive dismissal if you felt you had to leave your job to avoid dying.
If you do choose to work on the equipment, absolutely put a different padlock and a big sign on whilst you are working on the system. Make the sign big enough to cover the whole box so it has to be moved out of the way before any attempt can be made at the padlock.
Buy this type of padlock if you can bring it to bear: -
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're harder to bolt-crop.
Arrange for a second power isolator to be installed. The second power isolator could be upstream or downstream of the existing one, but should be either physically out of sight of the original or in a location where its purpose is not obvious (i.e adjacent to a load of switchgear). Make this isolator lockable as well (and don't issue any keys). Then do your best to keep the location/purpose of this isolator a secret. Then if somebody does cut off the original lock to switch on, nothing will happen. Then they can go and find the electrician and take a bollocking for ignoring the sign.
Finally, if this switch needs to be operated morning and night and dozens of people have they key, why is it locked at all?
Psychologically, you would be better to ditch the existing lock altogether and just use a lock when you are on maintenance. This would then make it clear that if there is a lock on this switch *at all*, then today must be a special occasion for some reason.
If there's you and an electrician that's two padlocks. This is basic electrical safety stuff. Have a browse around the Reece website. There are useful ideas and info on there. If you have CO2 floods or other fire fighting equipment it's also worth considering a sign in/out or tag system.
Well I'm glad everyone here seems to think this is a serious matter. The person who ignored the sign and turned the power on was telling everybody at the lunch table that the electrician had over-reacted. I managed to avoid saying what I thought about that. I have also managed to avoid emailing my boss about this appalling incident. I hope I remember everything I want to say to my boss tomorrow.
If the switch was not locked it could be turned on or off by the public. In theory only intelligent well-trained people have a key. I now know that to be false.
You don't use a padlock alone, you use a "lockout clamp" and then you use multiple padlocks.
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clamp is a simple "padlock multiplier". Rather than relying on one padlock per lock (and everyone + dog has a key) the clamp always leaves at least a couple of spare holes. In one of these the electrician places their own padlock, to which only they have a key. That way no-one else gets to remove the electrician's padlock. Bolt- cutters are an obvious issue otherwise.
It's also bad practice to use isolators as switches. Switching one & off every day through the isolator encourages the view that finding the isolator locked out and turning it back on is "normal working practice", rather than an indication that something unusual and not to be fiddled with is happening that day.
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