LOTO Individual Qualified Employee Control

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V

vey

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Winter Park, FL
I work on my own and I work in many different locations each year repairing 208/240 UL listed pottery kilns. These are on individual branch circuits.

What I've been doing when getting ready to troubleshoot and repair something that is directly wired into a fuse or switch box is to throw the knife switch, remove the cabinet, test for voltage and go to work. If there is no switch box, then I go back to the breaker box and use my breaker locking thingy and a tag, performing a "Simple Lockout -- Tag Out."

Now that the 2012 70E standard has come out, I see that Individual Qualified Employee Control has been eliminated. So I'm guessing that what I do now is use the padlock and tag more often.

I would throw the knife switch, tag and lock the switch box, then remove the cabinet etc. If the switch box can't be locked, then I go back to the breaker and lock that.

This is to prevent some knucklehead from sneaking up behind me while I am lost in thought with my chore, and throwing the switch on while I have my hands in there.

Do I have that right? Or did I miss something?
 
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petersonra said:
If I was worried about it, I would disconnect the power at the kiln and wire nut the conductors.
Click to expand...

Nah. Too much trouble and it would take too long. I need to troubleshoot and that takes an on and off thing sometimes. Some tests are while the kiln is dead and some test are when it is live. So I suit up for the live tests.

It's just that when I do the dead tests, it used to be taken for granted that I could yell, "Hey! Don't plug that in!" or "Hey! Don't throw that switch!" on account that I was standing right there with everything open and exposed. I guess that can't be taken for granted anymore.

It takes a real knuckle head to see somebody working on a piece of equipment and see a knife switch right next to it and throw it to the "on" position. I get my head and everything else in some of these kilns (some are really big) and I wouldn't notice if somebody sneaked in there and threw the switch.
 
Your safety is your responsibility so locking out and tagging out the power source/s to equipment that you are working on is going to serve you well as you never know who may energize a circuit that you are working on.
 
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