I would have thought that part of their familiarisation training would have involved an H&S talk that includes checking their surroundings for potential hazards.
As they state on all H&S courses, the person responsible for your safety is YOU. Your employer has to provide a safe working environment, but you also need to play your part too. Therefore it is the employees job to check that their workplace is safe.
Maybe the labels should be in a more prominent place on the equipment. If there is no label they should ask for assistance from someone higher up the food chain.
All of the above being in an ideal world of course :-)
So far so good. But when you have a studetn that can't work out how to connect a PP3 batter y to the battery clip, what then ? All we can ask the studetns to do is to report anything they think might be wrong or dangerous in these cases.
But how far do you go. When you use a computer to check email do you crawl under a bench find the extention lead that your monitor is connected to and back track it to the 13amp plug and read the label on it for a date ?
When I go into sainsburys I don't expect to have to check the plugs on thei r fridges before I open the door.
Define safe ? Do you think that an extention lead where the earth wire is visible ? The PAT testers passed it. The next day or so I failed it. I took a photo o f it send it to the safety person who employers the PAT tester and nothing happened he just said well throw it then, so I cut the plug off removed the fuse and the cable and but it back into stock.
The equipment and the plug are two seprate items most of the time.
in my lab if there's no label on the plug it means the equipment is new thi s year so doesn;t need testing but how will they know that the 11 new solde ring irons I put out 4 weeks ago with their IEC leads without a label on th e plug are OK. What if they take one of those leads to use on their labtop as they left their lead at home, or they use the lead on a PSU or scope ?
or an idea lab with ideal administrators, under idea managers, under an ide al government :)
A PAT (test) on a mains operated theatre light. I bought 4, 3 were fine, one was not. Paint on the case had not been removed where the earth terminal was fitted. Interestingly, the mains cable was different from that on the others - different factory perhaps?
Yes, my comment to people who ask me is that you need to know how to wire a plug, and you need to understand ohms law and the difference between megohms and milliohms. You most certainly do not need to be an electrician - it is intended to be doable by one of the more technically biased staff in most offices.
Note that the proper City and Guilds pass is the one recognised by HSE as showing competence. There are many other courses, in particular by PAT test equipment manufacturers which teach you how to use their tester and claim that makes you competent, but that is often not the case. Actually, using the PAT tester is the least important part of PAT testing - you do most of it without using the tester - the visual inspection part is the most important and finds most of the faults.
Also note that someone with legal responsibility for H&S within the company should also go on the course, for the responsibilities and record keeping part of the course. There is a separate certificate for this from the technical side (although everyone usually does both parts).
Find a course which includes practical work, and take your own PAT tester with you, as the trainer will probably show you how to use it.
You can subcontract things like PAT testing, but the directors of your company are still responsible for ensuring it is done competently. That would mean ensuring the people actually doing the testing are competent, which they might do by requiring them to bring in originals of their C&G 2377 certificates, and making copies to keep on file, so you can later show the HSE that you took reasonable precautions in the duty of care required of the directors. This would be a defence if it came to something like a corproate manslaughter charge (or more likely prevent any such charge being brought in the first place).
You should draw this to the attention on your directors. Someone in your company would be well advised to go on the C&G Competent Management of Electrical Equipment Maintenance course, which is the non-technical half of 2377, even if you aren't doing the testing yourself. It covers the legal requirements, and evidence you should keep.
I'm just back from a few days away, hence the late comments.
I bought some brand new kit, metal cased with an internal transformer and hardwired grommeted mains cable.. The externally replaceable mains fuse was in the neutral lead. When I complained to the importer, a well known amateur radio supplier, their comment was, "well it will still blow won't it?" I did get a panicky phone call from the MD shortly afterwards though. They had checked the rest of the stock and found it all to be the same.
or it just fell off. That is one reason why I wanted the list of everything that has been tested, for my own curiosity of how much stuff has been checked and to check it off against my stock list, then iof I found the label I could stick it back on.
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