QW OR ELECTRICIAN

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hawkeye23

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At a our company we have a few electricians and a few QW where we follow 70e for our safety policy. Now in 70e there are no electricians only QW which most happen to be managers without any electrical background. The foreman who happens to be licensed electrician with 19years in the trade has to follow what these guys say. When the foreman tells this guy something should not be done because of safety he gets over ruled because of money? [ cost] The foreman is a layed back type of fellow.

Has anyone come across this before and if so would you mined sharing how you handled this.
Thank you in advance
 
Does your company have a Risk Management or Safety Director type person ? If so contact them & state that LIVE work is unsafe. A planned shut down is always cheaper in the long run than a unplanned shutdown. With a scheduled shutdown you can order ahead of time what you need. Performing LIVE work can result in serious injury or death.
others will chime in
 
One of the things I have observed about these kind of situations is that often what the electrician wants to do has little or nothing to do with safety. It is just they way they want to do it.

I have also observed that is not unusual for the safety guy to be mostly clueless about electrical safety.

I would want some examples of what is being claimed is unsafe before I would comment further on how you might proceed.
 
Or their insurance company's risk management department. Nothing like a suggestion about increased rates or cancellation to the attention.
 
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hawkeye23 said:
At a our company we have a few electricians and a few QW where we follow 70e for our safety policy. Now in 70e there are no electricians only QW which most happen to be managers without any electrical background. The foreman who happens to be licensed electrician with 19years in the trade has to follow what these guys say. When the foreman tells this guy something should not be done because of safety he gets over ruled because of money? [ cost] The foreman is a layed back type of fellow.

Has anyone come across this before and if so would you mined sharing how you handled this.
Thank you in advance
Click to expand...
I don't understand...only a QW can do the work. Just because you are an electrician does not mean that you are a QW.
 
Peter

One major complaint is some workers non QW are able to operate switchgear breakers when there is a fault without ppe, because its off shift and the electricians are off duty . This gear is labeled with IE and ppe rating ,with a pm documentation past 6 years . This is just one complaint. Some would say why spend all this money on a study and still not follow the safety policy of osha. They were told and shown how to reset breakers but have no listing as a QW for company.
Does anyone think this work they do is safe ? The electricians did attend electrical safety training classes and are QW as per company .
 
The company gets to say who is qualified to do the work. If the company has assigned the work to someone, then the company has said that the person is qualified to do the work.

That being said, the OSHA rules do not permit a breaker to be reset until you have found out the reason it tripped. There is an exception that permits you to reset the breaker without investigating the cause if you know that the cause was an overload.
 
And that exception does not necessarily exempt from wearing proper PPE if the risk assessment is for the closed breaker assembly.
The fact that a particular person does not have access to PPE does not cut any ice.
 
hawkeye23 said:
Peter

One major complaint is some workers non QW are able to operate switchgear breakers when there is a fault without ppe, because its off shift and the electricians are off duty . This gear is labeled with IE and ppe rating ,with a pm documentation past 6 years . This is just one complaint. Some would say why spend all this money on a study and still not follow the safety policy of osha. They were told and shown how to reset breakers but have no listing as a QW for company.
Does anyone think this work they do is safe ? The electricians did attend electrical safety training classes and are QW as per company .
Click to expand...

Does the company keep a physical roster of QW for each task? Very few do, and there is no requirement anywhere that such a physical list exist.

When the risk assessment was done on resetting these breakers, did the RA show that PPE was going to be required to operate the breakers?
 
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