The date has been set and one or two of our technicians will soon be at your door. What happens when they arrive?
Kick-Off
First, as required by NFPA 70E, we’ll have a short safety meeting. During this contractor/host meeting, we’ll go through your corporate safety guidelines, discuss the hazards that may be present to our employees in your facility, perform a job safety analysis, and discuss our on-site safety policies with you.
After the meeting our technicians will request a tour of the facility. This lets them become familiar with their surroundings while escorted by someone who won’t get lost. It also gives them the opportunity to adjust the job safety analysis paperwork before work begins.
It’s common on these tours for issues to be pointed out that weren’t addressed back in your office. You might only remember a certain limited access room after you’ve seen it for the first time in a few weeks, or they might point out something that you didn’t realize could be a hazard to us.
We know your time is valuable, so in most cases our technicians will part ways with you after the facility tour. Unless your corporate policy requires a full escort, our crew will be fine on their own to begin the evaluation.
Data Collection
We’ll start the evaluation at your main service equipment – where the power company connects to your facility. There will be a transformer, or a set of them, and larger electrical equipment. Our technicians will take some time to record information from the outside of this equipment and then begin opening it.
We need to open certain equipment to gather information that isn’t available from the outside. This information could include wire sizes, breaker settings, and observing the orientation of components within the gear. Typically, this can be accomplished without turning anything off or interrupting your processes.
While the equipment is open, we typically scan it with a thermal IR camera to look for issues related to loose connections or failure of the electrical components (this is a complimentary service we offer with all evaluations).
Also, anytime we open a piece of equipment to expose the energized parts our technicians will be wearing PPE for both arc flash and electrical shock. They will ensure the area is safe for others through administrative control methods such as barricade tape.
Once data is collected from the main gear the technician will safely close everything up. Next, they repeat the process for all the electrical panels throughout the facility. Not everything needs to be opened, but the technicians will record data pertinent to the evaluation from every panel.
One of the other aspects of Collection is calculating the distance of circuit conductors. You may notice the technician walking around tracing conduit on the ceiling, or matching equipment identification names to a panel index. There may be instances where a technician asks you to verify a piece of equipment. This is usually due to a naming discrepancy between the panel and the field equipment.
Labeling
One of the characteristics that makes Rozel unique in the industry is that we label your equipment on the same trip as when data collection is complete. You receive a full evaluation that doesn’t leave you wondering about your hazards for weeks or months on end.
This final process is very straightforward: All the electrical equipment in the facility that’s required to get an arc flash label gets an arc flash hazard label.
The technician will ask for a workspace to set up their laptop and printer, and access to a guest wifi is helpful to communicate with our engineers. The technician will print and record your labels for future reference, and then go back through your facility and apply them where they belong.
Completion
As labeling is nearing completion the technician will contact you to set up an exit meeting. During this brief meeting we go over initial results such as how many labels were applied, how many of them were at a level that requires arc-rated PPE, and any unsafe conditions we observed.
The exit meeting concludes the on-site evaluation process. Our technicians then leave you with a labeled facility and known arc flash hazards. The full report will follow a few weeks later, complete with recommendations to improve your system.