Revamping Arc Flash Policy

I sit on the safety committee for my company and we are currently in the proccess of revamping our company Arc Flash policy for a few reasons. We are a commercial electrical contracting company with about 60 employees in construction and 7 service techs on the road. There are several reasons for the revamping.

Our service techs are outfitted with an 8 cal/cm2 kit complete with helmet & face shield , Nomex hood , cal/cm2 coveralls. The service techs currently work on energized equipment without any "live work permit" on file. I this as a problem because we are working on equipment that has not been properly assesed and we are not sure if the PPE is appropriate.

On the construction side they have similar gear but of an 11 cal/cm2 rating. The only time construction works gear live is if they need to remove covers to verify bussing for new circuit breakers or to get a part number off an existing breaker. Again I am not sure proper assesment is being made of the hazard and the PPE is correct. This gear is usually 480v and could be upto 4k amp.

One solution is to establish a "Live work Team" that will have training to perform the tasks properly. I am looking for opinions as to what type of training should we be looking at i.e. NFPA 70E seminar, First aid,etc. Any feed back would be greatly appreciated

Sorry this is so Long

Joe

This is a little difficult but my recommendation is training to the point that electrician can make a reasonably good estimate of Incident Energy. This means a basic understanding of fault current calculations and how the IEEE formulas work. The other alternative would be a detail understanding of how to use the NFPA task table. I've taught this to a contractor similar in size and it seemed to go over well. You should also have a permit policy, even if its a one man thing by the guy doing the work.