Locking Panelboards?

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Hmmm...are the Nurses the "Qualified Persons"...

Sad to say that depending on the condition of the enclosure and so on and given the environment I would not have a problem with wanting that panel to stay locked. All major hospitals have a maintenance staff for these types of issues.

And yes, even if it was locked it is considered accessible to those who are qualified.

(G) Locked Electrical Equipment Rooms or Enclosures.
Electrical equipment rooms or enclosures housing
electrical apparatus that are controlled by a lock(s) shall be
considered accessible to qualified persons.

Inconvient for those on the floor...probably...should they call the maintenance staff to resolve it YES. If it is tripping over and over again then the issue needs to be addressed and lets not forget the environment we are dealing with as well.
 
cschmid said:
what there are different levels of qualified I do not remember reading that... that does not make them lesser qualified electrical worker it makes them unqualified workers doing electrical work.
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:grin:Good catch

That statement does seem a little misleading; itseems to say that there is a middle-ground between qual and unqual. Well, that's kinda what I mean. for an individual task, there is either qual or unqual; however, I am referring to electrical maintenance work as a whole. There are many places that will hire a 2nd year apprentice as a "Maint. Elec.", when no where else would he ever be called an electrician, then they will hire a JW and call him the same thing. This is what I mean by lesser qualified.
 
In Oklahoma there is no requirement for electrical maintenance, it depends on the facility and how they want to do their hiring, if anything they may have them watch a safety film or two. We do have some facalities hire qualified licensed people, but most cases not.
 
now we are in interesting area...:grin:

either qualified or not...just because they are licensed does not make them qualified according to OSHA..If you do OSHA training you are qualified..seems strange to me..I bet we can ge someone to start quoting the articles on qualified..I see many here who think it all right for Home Inspectors to do electrical inspections and call them qualified..So why would they call a electrical maintenace man unqualified..

I understand the difference between qualified and unqualified..most electrical maintenace men are qualified because of the specific training they recieve for the equipement they are fixing and know their limits..Now there are more who do building maintenance who are not qualified and are not factory trained in any aspect and will not stop when they are past there skill level.

Why the double standard here????:grin:


Lets see who steps up now..:grin:
 
hbendillo said:
I have a hospital client and his facility has panelboards located in corridor walls throughout the facility. The state health facility inspector told him those panelboards must remained locked at all times. Is there anything in the NEC about this requirement? Yeah, it is a good idea but my client wants his staff to have access to reset a breaker without calling the staff electrician. I am not sure I agree.
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What presents a greater danger:

  • Inadvertently turning off a breaker, or
  • in an emergency there is no access to a breaker when required?
I think that the location of the panels could have been chosen better and made accessible to the staff at will and inaccessible to others.
 
It seems that electrical work tends to follow the same trend as other areas in life. The more we learn, the more we realize that we don't know and/or the more we respect the unfamiliar.

It would also follow suit that just as a teenager thinks he has all of life's questions figured out, many not-so-qualified and not-very-qualified people think they know more than they do and think they can do more than they can.
 
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