Refining “Electrical Safety: From Paper to Practice”

Abstract

The activities of an electrical worker are often construed as overly complex or challenging and are often misunderstood by most non-electrical workers. Non-electrical workers may not understand what they do not know and risk greater exposure to electrical events because of it. Recognition of this was the first step in what amounted to a three-year, multi-tiered journey by the authors and their former colleagues to utilize the NFPA 70E standard to create and implement an effective and sustainable electrical safety program (ESP) at a large petrochemical company. We began by identifying our problems through third-party auditing of our programs which led to an actionable task list. This task list was then split up and targeted by department: the qualified electrical workers (QEWs) within the refineries, the operations employees interacting with the equipment and the QEWs, and the contractor workforce assisting them both. Programs were developed to encompass the tasks of each department, whether it be assisting, operating, or performing work on electrical equipment. Program creation, revision, and updating were conducted by a cross-discipline task force consisting of individuals from operations, health and safety, engineering and both maintenance electricians and power distribution. Training, utilizing a third-party vendor, was designed specifically to encompass NFPA 70E and how we, as an organization, have implemented it, through both procedure and practice, for each targeted department. This instructor led training was provided to the entirety of the operations and maintenance groups. After beginning the process in the first quarter of 2015, full implementation of the 2018 version of NFPA 70E occurred in December 2017, and we have now moved into sustainability of the program. As a result, we expect to see a reduction in electrical incidents, and most notably, have seen an increase in the cross-discipline knowledge of electrical safe work practices allowing us to become more inquisitive, and assist in further developing our people, programs, and most importantly our culture, around electrical safety.