General Questions

I have some general questions regarding PPE and qualified employee training. Can anyone answer them:

1. Article 110.6(c) covers emergency training requirements. It says that employees must be trained in CPR and “certified by the employer annually”. What does that mean? We train our employees to the American Heart Association standard and we all receive cards that are good for two years. This is part of our required training and appears on our individual “training matrices”. Each employees training matrix is reviewed monthly by their supervisor to ensure that all required training is met and if the employee is lacking any required training, he/she is restricted from performing that work until the training deficiency is corrected. Is this sufficient to meet the requirement of Article 110.6(c)?

2. Where would I look for requirements for working overhead in a switchyard or on overhead 480V street lighting? In the past we would send folks up in the bucket trucks with a hot stick to verify de-energization when we opened disconnects, but all we would require them to wear PPE wise was gloves and that was basically just cause if you took the gloves off you could still feel tingles in your hand down the stick from static. I don’t know that that was necessarily the “right” way to do things, but that is what we done. Where would I find information on the right way to do this? And for doing overhead light work in the switchyards and the street lighting, our supervision wants to just use a JLG, is that legal? What kind of PPE would they need?

3. AC versus DC. Does NFPA 70E really address DC voltage? When checking for DC voltage now, we are using the charts and requiring them to measure + to – instead of to ground. Is this the right way to approach that?

You are talking about 70E but then asking about switchyards and street lighting. Do you work for a utility or on utility owned equipment? Important from a standards point of view.

And forgive my ignorance, but what is a JLG?

Regarding the CPR training, I guess you could just certify annually that the employee has received your required 2 year training. Don't know that there is an annual training requirement, just the training cert. Maybe someone else here knows differently.

70E does cover DC over 50 volts and unless you are checking for a ground on the system, you should be checking + to - for verification.

As for the hot sticks, have you had them checked lately?

Alan

Welcome to the forum, I am sure you will get many answers to these questions, some may vary, most of these have been asked in the past so if you use the search feature you can find old discussions on your topics.

This one has been debated before, my veiw is you only need to verify they are current annually, your monthly review seems to meet that requirement.

OSHA 1910.269 will have many answers for you.

Are you testing your hotsticks, every 2 years is the "requirement", or is it annually? I forget, will have to look that one up.

If your hotsticks are used as your "primary means of shock protection" then they need to be tested, or you can wear gloves to be your primary means of shock protection. In my experience hot sticks get dirty and beat up and I have never felt comfortable using them as my primary means, so I have always required gloves for hot stick work, we test our goves every 6 months and don't test our sticks, just replace them when they look like they need it.

All voltages referenced in the 70E are AC RMS, and DC (They are the same thing). You are using the correct approach.

Now here comes some different veiws

The CPR and first aid is required under OSHA 29 CFR 1910.269 and 1910.151. For the certification, we also use the AHA, and we retrain biannually as that is the length of the certification. Certified by the employer annually (to us) means that we have all training on record and check annually for current status. Our system is computerized and automatically "flags" when someone is due for retraining.

Required testing:
Insulated Hot Sticks/ Insulated Hook Sticks, to be tested annually.
Insulating Blankets, before first issue and every 12 months thereafter
Insulating gloves/sleeves, Before first issue and every 6 months thereafter

There are also "hook sticks" that are used in an industrial setting to turn on/off bus plugs. These are not required to be sent out for testing, as they do not come into contact with "live voltage" just a visual check to be determined by plant authority. We check ours annually.