At a previous employment we bit the bullet, bought the kit and had our maintenance team trained in its operation by the manufacturer (lovely piece of kit assigned tracking numbers, kept records, issued reminders and printed the labels) - even I picked up how to use it in a ten minute session.

Current employer we have a facilities management team who arrange the various contracts across a number of providers - interestingly "competence requirements" do not seem to appear in any purchase order despite providers being screened by the Supplier Assessment system.

Thanks Roundtuit. Yes up until covid we also had our own person trained to go around our various sites. However, since then we have been using external providers local to each of our premises. This has resulted in a variation in the levels of training accepted at each place. Initially everyone we employed seemed to have the C&G2377, however this appears to be getting more difficult it seems.

I think some were just accepting anyone with any form of electrical training willing to put a sticker on and some just accepting C&G2377, and some seemed to have what might be considered a “higher qualification”.

I think just accepting anyone who is willing to put a sticker on, not good, as faulty equipment could easily kill. So I was hoping to find some sort of definitive ( Ok I know its unlikely) standard that should be accepted as doing our legal and moral duty.

Part of me is also concerned that just because someone is competent to install wiring and sockets etc in a building does not necessarily give them the knowledge to deal with electronic equipment.

Perhaps I’m over thinking this, and others just accept anyone willing to put a sticker on. One manager said to me, surly they would not be doing it if they were not competent! Another comment was that they used a company from NICEIC who deemed that company capable of PAT. However, that just means someone in the company can do it (suitable qualification) and not necessarily the person they send to you. NICEIC say they require C&G2377, but the person who came out to us did not have it.

I guess I’m no further forward in being able to advise our managers.

Chris

The insurance company really needs to challenge government.

It is the one piece of legislation I like to table when someone raises the question of competence (for anything) as the Electricity Regulations merrily state those working with electricity should be "competent" but those same regulations are wholly devoid of any prescription or definition of what a competent electrician should be.

Hi Chris

Reference #5, I think you can sleep reasonably easy if it comes to worrying about what an enforcing authority might do if it were to come to an electrocution.

I trawled through the HSE fatal accident online narratives at the beginning of 2019 to look for accidents where the direct cause might be electricity, so I included fire/explosion incidents in my search.

Data from April 2013 to the last relevant entry being in October 2018 - there is a time lag before these things get published.

Also looked at the HSE stats for years 2013-14 to 2018/18 so a five year period. That indicated an average of 6 work-related electrical fatalities a year.

The fatal accident narratives took that up to a maximum of 8 a year but including some incidents involving fire/explosion where I couldn't find enough information to discount electricity as being the initiator. 

It is possible that I didn't pick up e.g. a scenario where someone has an electrical shock and then falls from a platform as that would be categorised as "fall from height" but these are going to be very rare.

About half the deaths from contact or arcing with electricity involve inadvertent exposure to overhead power lines. With one exception all involved plant travelling underneath. The exception was someone on the roof of a new build house constructed with a roof just 1.5m below the power line - don't ask me how that got planning p permission without a diversion of the line!

By looking at the information that I could find on each fatality many of the other cases involved "live working" - not taking the precautions which have been required since the Electricity (Special Regulations) 1908 and 1944 and continued in the current EAW Regs.

I can't remember EVER hearing of an accident that would have been prevented by PAT testing rather than fairly simply looking for obvious faults such as plugs being incorrectly wired (Rare these days as most portable equipment comes with moulded plugs).

....and PAT testing equipment is relatively simple to operate. Does someone REALLY need some specific certificate of competence?

Hi Chris

1. It would indeed be helpful if there was some guidance on what training and/or competence might be appropriate for someone doing PAT testing, and that the guidance stayed reasonably stable for a while.

2. Insurance companies tend to add their own "blue tape" to demand this, that and the other that may not be legally required or even appropriate. 

3. Electric shocks are, of course, relatively common whether at the workplace or outside. I guess most adults will have received at least one mains voltage shock in their lifetime. Fortunately almost invariably without significant injury. So it tends to be either dead/very seriously hurt or walk away almost unscathed.

When I did the earlier research via a link to RIDKIND database from http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/causinj/kinds-of-accident.pdf

numbers of NON-fatal injuries assigned as down to electricity in HSE stats in 2017/18

Contact with electricity or electrical discharge

212

23

189

<1%

<1%

<1%

So the first column [The six number were in a horizontal line when I pasted them!!!] would be the total reported NON-fatals, second column "specified injuries", third column "O7D injuries" and then three columns indicating less (perhaps MUCH less) than 1% of each of those three.

When I worked for HSE its H&S Policy had a small number of appendices. One said e.g. that an Inspector could not enter a compressed air tunnel without first being accompanied by someone from HSE who knew what they were doing (well words to that effect"). Only did this once which meant summoning up the ONLY person in HSE who fitted the person spec up to Scotland from London.

However, one of the other appendices which would be relevant to almost every HSE Inspector was the one which said that only Specialist Electrical Inspectors could enter a live substation. 

To get appointed as a Specialist Electrical Inspector you had to know what the rules for high voltage (as defined - so much higher than 240v or 415v) working were to the letter. 

....and in practice, accidents to those doing work on high voltage equipment in the UK very, very rarely get injured as a result of the electricity they are near. The rules have been in place for many decades and are rigidly applied. 

Hence you might read about a linesman falling from e.g. a MEWP but are very unlikely to hear of them being electrocuted.

Edited by user 18 November 2024 15:15:47(UTC)  | Reason: Explanation of formatting issue!