Posted By Malcolm Hogarth I expect some of you will smile at this one but I have had a serious request for advice on the best formal training course (hands on) for somebody responsible for changing light bulbs and tubes. I am guessing it will come down to good old risk assessment and safe system of work etc but all serious resposes are welcomed. Malcolm

Posted By Mat Malclom you are on a wind up matey, I personally think you yourself should give the training, preferably with wet hands and standing in a bucket of water.

Posted By Frank Hi Malcolm I worked as a contracts manager for a company and one of the jobs was to replace lights in a work place, this being a very large open plan call centre with a workforce of over 200 people. We had a programme of work to relamp all the lights over a period of 2 yrs. I can’t remember exactly how many lights but it was in the thousands. A risk assessment had to be put into place for every type of lamp/light to be changed from ordinary 240 BC in household lamps to fancy LV transformer halogen lamps. The guys working for me were trained Electricians, however for you I guess this is not the case so therefore I would as a minimum ensure that the following is adopted. 1 Ensure the person is competent to change the lights he doesn’t need to be an Electrician (This isn’t too hard as we all do it at home) How do you know if the guy is competent I hear you say. Get your client to hire the services of a good Electrical Contracting Company (preferably who are NIC EIC approved) for a day to oversee observe and train someone on changing all the different types of lights they have on their premises. They should then be in a position to give you a letter to say the person is competent. 2 Ensure the area is clear of people and cordoned off. Some lights may need the louvres or diffusers removing and some are quite heavy so manual handling will need to be looked at here, even 2 man working. ? 3 An appropriate risk assessment in place highlighting the hazards involved i.e. electricity, working at height manual handling. 4 Ensure controlled measures are put in place Isolate the equipment. This sometimes can be difficult as you might lose a complete set of lights from experience but hey to work safely you might need to turn some others off and if this means putting in another controlled measure to safe guard other people in the working environment then so be it. When the job has been done most Electrical Wholesalers who sell the lamps/lights will take the old ones for safe disposal. Not to sure if this is the case but it was a few years ago. I wouldn’t put it passed them that they now charge for this service but your client does have a duty of care under ISO14001 for the safe disposal of some form of lamps. Hope this helps. Frank