NFPA-70E Maintenance Permits

[ramsy]

Permits for maintenance & hot work are coming to the next NFPA 70E code cycle. 70E is providing step-by-step procedures for issuing of permits from any of several default AHJ's. Where no municipal AHJ exists, the default AHJ trickles down to fire marshals, property owners, plant managers, and suppliers.

According to our local IAEI education chair, 70E code panel presentations are visited by attorneys. Compliance failures for Hot permits, and the new supplier self-documentation with NRTL certifications are expected to be easily challenged during cross examinations at trial.

NFPA 70E maintenance permits are among the clear instruction for lower courts to test who is liable for damages. The insurance reps want industrial-accident damages more evenly spread around.

 

[romex jockey]

Interesting Roger, yet essentially smells like more 'ivory tower bureaucracy' , which most default ahj's won't even realize exist at first sniff. ~RJ~

 

[jim dungar]

Why would we assume that any AHJ that does installation inspections would know anything at all about safe work practices?

 

[hbiss]

Even worse and even laughable would be fire marshals, property owners, plant managers, and suppliers. hmy:

-Hal

 

[paulengr]

That's utterly stupid. OSHA is very clear that unlike general lockout/tagouts, electrical lockouts either for utilization equipment under Subchapter S or distribution equipment under 1910.269 are to be done by qualified personnel. I've been in a plant where operators followed a sheet of paper written by production engineers no less and maintenance personnel were considered too stupid to handle lockouts despite clear regulations to the contrary. Well, they ran me off for putting my foot down on thus stupidity and a couple weeks later my neighbor took a 7200 V hit after operations locked it out.

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

 

[romex jockey]

It's always seems those making the most 'safety' noise ignore it most....~RJ~

 

[kwired]

Interesting Roger, yet essentially smells like more 'ivory tower bureaucracy' , which most default ahj's won't even realize exist at first sniff. ~RJ~

It isn't an issue for your NEC compliance inspectors, that is not part of what they are there to enforce.

Where it is a problem is if OSHA, State Labor dept., workers compensation insurance provider, etc. happen to get involved. If it doesn't happen on a random inspection, things will come up if there is a major incident involving an electrical related injury or death. Not just what they see when they walk in to do said investigation, but any evidence of what safety procedures from the past were like will be looked at. No policy, plans, documentation of special work incidents and how they were handled doesn't make your overall plan look good. Use of 70E as your standard for electrical safety is easiest plan to use - it will be accepted. Evidence you have not been following it don't help you though.