Industry Plant Safety Practices

[joec]

I am an electrician on a committee to develop a safety program for our plant. Committee consists of managers, supervisors and safety personnel. My belief is that 70E pretty well defines what PPE to wear and when to wear it, but it isn't that easy to implement. I know we would have to have a flash hazard analysis done to confirm flash hazard bounderies, purchase PPE and train everyone. Sorry to be long-winded...I would appreciate anyone describing safety practices in industrial environments (OSHA 1910, subpart S) they have experience with.

Thanks for any help!
Joe

 

[petersonra]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I'd be willing to bet that actual practices vary widely from what the rules tell you they should be. Rather than ask what people are doing, it might be better to ask what they should be doing to meet these requirements.

I have yet to see anyone ever wear anything other than safety glass, and sometimes not that, when working on hot MCCs. Not even gloves.

A few years ago I asked a plant electrician in a fortune 50 company what his safety precautions were for working on live 480V MCCs. His answer - put one hand in your pocket. Some mumbo-jumbo about how this prevents electricution because it prevents electrical energy going to your heart. No other precautions but safety glasses.

The plant did have a rule prohibiting first year apprentices from working on live 480V equipment. I guess they cared about the kids more than the old men.

 

[joec]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Thanks for your reply Bob! I agree that there are probably few plants that do much more than rely on personal experience and judgement keeping their electricians safe. I hope to get a good sample of industrial safety practices.

 

[petersonra]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Another thing - I don't recall even seeing a flash suit, nomex hood, or face shield, much less ever seen anyone actually wear one.

 

[friebel]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I worked for the DuPont Company for 45 years at the same plant in Deepwater, NJ, and let me tell you that DuPont World-wide adheres to all the Safety rules of OSHA, NEC, as the minimum and in some cases they exceed the Safety rules where they feel the need to.
All of the electricians at our plant wear Nomex clothing, Hard hat, safety shoes,side-shield safety glasses.
The policy is No Hot Work, period. When they need to throw a switch in a High-Hazard MCC, they put on a Nomex Hood, with a face shield and wear protective gloves to throw the switch to the off position.
I am now retired and teaching at a local college and I must admit, it does bother me when I hear the storys of how some companies operate with electrical safety.

 

[kentirwin]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I work at an industrial site as the only "nuts and bolts" electrician on staff amongst numerous elctrical process technicians. I have a flash suit and use it. We don't work anything hot unless it's an emergency. When I do work it hot I've got my gloves and glasses on at minimum and suit up if the flash hazard if sufficient.

 

[ron]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

From an engineering side, I'm seeing more companies recognize that the proscriptive table in NFPA70E is useless, because of the notes associated with it. It requires that you know the arc flash fault current available and clearing time of the OCPD. This essentially requires in most cases IEEE 1584 calculations.
Since many distribution systems change over time, some on site electricians have the calculations completed by a PE, then utilize the software and database that the PE prepared to keep up the information. This allows you to recalculate based on different working distances on the fly.
Most of the software packages also help prepare the energized work permits that are required.

[ February 11, 2005, 08:51 AM: Message edited by: ron ]

 

[69boss302]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Industry has this terrible habit of cost verification. Is it worth turning something off to keep someone from getting hurt. HMMM lets see insurance has listed a finger is worth $200, a hand is worth $500 and three fingers constitutes a hand, if he only loses 4 fingers we save $100. To many number crunchers. No consideration for experience lost if the guy's out for day's or even dies. To many MBA's running manufacturing facilities. Hope I'm not off the subject. But that's the problem's we deal with. Have to keep thing's running and yes there are people out there willing to risk their lives to keep their job so the management can get away with it. Just like the DIY's and trunk slammers that save the home owner a few bucks but may put their home and lives in jeopardy. Sorry just had to mention all this. (Besides been a DIY and trunk slammer myself so don't take offense) Seen a couple bad things happen to other's so I have laid off doing extra "sideline" work. Been lucky nothing happened to me and always followed the code. Didn't do any major projects just things most contractors wouldn't even bother to bid.

 

[petersonra]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I am a bit offended. I assume your reference to "trunk slammers" refers to tradesmen working in non-traditional ways. A lot of people just starting out don't have the money for fancy trucks and big offices with gold plated toilets in the executive washrooms.

That does not mean they do not do fine work. I have on occassion utilized the services of such people and am quite happy with both the end result and the price.

 

[69boss302]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Peter, I apologize I didn't mean to offend anyone. As I said I could be put in that bracket myself. That is just the term I have seen utilized here a lot of times. Yes they do good work and there are many that can't afford fancy trucks and I also have seen the posts about keeping your work going when your truck is broke down. I understand all those I just wanted to use the term so I didn't have to write a book. Again I apologize if I offended you. It's just that there are the one's out there that do steal the work and make it hard for the good guy's. And industry has to deal with the same problem's. The hero's that throw safety to the wind and look good because they saved the company money, but were actually nothing but extremely lucky no one got hurt or killed. And I'll even bet the one that stand's there and looks like the hero isn't even the one that was in jeopardy. I've just seen it to many times and butted to many heads to try and take care of my people and still got blamed for being a none team player.

 

[rpmlube]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I am an electrician in a power plant and also work in the safety dept. here. From what I see is if you do not use NFPA 70E section 130 you are asking for trouble. Go to Bussmann fuse web page they have some very good information on what happens to someone when they get arc flashed. We use nomex coveralls and flash hoods with rubber gloves with the leather cover.The results of and arc flash can be devastating. If you are in a place to make it happen then I would push for the training and to make your upper management aware of what can happen and the cost that they will pay.

 

[rbalex]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

My personal observation of over 25 refineries for several different companies nationwide is that 70E is being well implemented.

Employers are very well represented on the TC; in fact, ?Users? are already over 1/3 of the TC membership. [Eight of 23 in the last Committee Directory I've downloaded] Several of the ?Special Experts? are retired from major industrial companies or actually represent employer groups and the Aluminum Association, while classified as a ?Manufacturer? is represented by a foundry operation. Utility companies are classified as ?Users? on the TC. NECA and IEC represent employers. One of the ?Enforcers? is actually employed by a major construction company. FedOSHA is a non-voting member.

Effectively, "Employers" as a group have the power of veto on the 70E TC; yet, I can assure you worker safety is the priority (I still know 18 of the current Principals) and the IBEW representative is both eloquent and very well respected. NEMA and several other ?manufactures? have also brought much needed research to the table. (They?re the ones with the resources to do a lot of the testing.)

The only problem I saw was: Who represents Joe?s Body Shop? I felt that I wore three hats sometimes: ?Installer/Maintainer? (my ?official? classification), "Design Professional" (who I really wanted to represent) and ?Little Guy? (who I felt often needed representation).

Freibel?s experience doesn?t surprise me at all ? the current TC Chair is a recently retired DuPont employee.

 

[petersonra]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

There does seem to be a lack of cost effective ways of dealing with some of these safety issues. I wish the feds would just make up some rules you can follow for common situations that would cover 95% of the cases, rather than write arcane rules that cover everything but are difficult for the average guy to understand.

It would probably result in much higher compliance with safety requirements if they were actually written in an understandable way. I read some of them and after the fourth pass through still wonder what they actually mean.

It seems doubtful that the level of gibberish encountered when someone makes an effort to make the workplace safe actually ends up making the workplace any safer. My guess is after a while, a lot of people just give up because they cannot understand the deliberatly obfuscatory language used and cannot afford to pay $1000/day for someone to come in and explain it in slightly less confusing language. For smaller businesses, the cost of this kind of stuff is a much larger chunk than they can often afford.

Its better safe than sorry, but being out of a job sucks too.

 

[69boss302]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I was in one plant where they gave documented safety talks every day. That was supposed to keep everybody safe. Amazingly people still got hurt and I was there when one guy was killed. Not fun!!!! Any way, my question to guy's a lot of times was, Just because a job was done and no one hurt, does that mean the job was done safely? MHO, NO.

 

[rbalex]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

In my observation, the rules are only ?? deliberately obfuscatory ? to those who don?t want to follow them. (That does't mean they aren't obfuscatory )

 

[petersonra]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Originally posted by rbalex:
In my observation, the rules are only ?? deliberately obfuscatory ? to those who don?t want to follow them. (That does't mean they aren't obfuscatory )

I believe it is deliberate. It gives those who write the rules an out because they can claim the end user did not understand them. And quite frankly, that would be true.

By and large government buruarcrats could care less about us, our safety, or our health. if they write regulations that cnanot be understood, thus cannot be followed, but can be enforced, there is a lot of room for fines. Big companies can afford the fines, little ones cannot.

I may be a bit of a cynic on this point, but i am not convinced I am that far off.

 

[rbalex]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Originally posted by petersonra:
...I believe it is deliberate...

I beleive you simply don't understand the process. NFPA Standards are consensus documents, sanctioned by ANSI. The government has no control over either organization.

One of the reasons FedOSHA uses 70E is that the only way they can rewrite their own rules is by an Act of Congress. They are permitted to enforce American National Safety Standards, which are essentially "...consensus documents, sanctioned by [either] ANSI" or ASTM.

They are permitted to interpret their own existing rules and the consensus standards; but they don't make them up.

 

[69boss302]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

I have to agree with petersonra. Rules get written due to reports. Have you ever seen were a report is not correct because they didn't want to get someone in trouble. Also investigation's which generate the report's are usually done on a basis of who's to blame, not root cause. Even though it gets called root cause analysis. The people doing the investigation do the typical thing of troubleshooting. Find the symptom's and address that instead of find the problem. Sorry the powers that be have created another cynic here also.

 

[rbalex]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Again, I can only say you apparently don?t understand the NFPA Code development process . The Technical Committees and Code Making Panels don?t write the rules; they evaluate public proposals and comments. Anyone can make a propsal and it is evaluated.

How you employer?s ?powers that be? develop corporate rules is an entirely different matter.

 

[joec]

Re: Industry Plant Safety Practices

Thanks to all of you who have replied! Please continue adding thoughts that come up on this subject.

Our committee needs to develop a program for PPE use that minimizes confusion on what PPE to wear and when to wear it and provides electricians substantial education on hazards to the point they are confident in explaining to a supervisor they aren't going to do something until they are confident they have checked what they need to and put on appropriate PPE if necessary. Production supervisors are great at what they do but don't necessarily understand the hazards that exist and as someone has already said in this thread, the mentality is that if something was done and nothing bad happened it must have been done safely. Also, we have too many electricians who are afraid to admit they need to think about what they're doing before they do it when a potential hazard exists and can easily be convinced to do the wrong thing. Our main function is to keep production equipment running so if you do something, no one got hurt and it minimized down time you must have done the right thing. It's a challenge to change this acceptance.

Cost justification has been mentioned too. It is true companies are hesitant to invest in equipment and training we haven't needed before and we haven't had any accidents, that they know of. Staying current on safety is no different than staying current on manufacturing technology except technology advances in manufacturing have a return on investment.

I apologize for not directly posting quotes. I have to figure out how.

Thanks again for participating in this thread!