Earlier today, I shared my thoughts on a critical safety step that is often not part of LOTO periodic inspections involving qualified electrical workers. That article spurred a conference call with a client this afternoon. That discussion led to the next layer of the proverbial onion being peeled back…
Who should be responsible for managing volt meters being used by qualified electrical workers? The company or the worker?
Most organizations require the maintenance worker(s) to provide their own tools, including volt meters; which has always been puzzling to me as everywhere I worked as a safety manager, the company provided top-of-the-line meters to our electrical workers.
Do we require confined space entrants, attendants, or entry supervisors to go out and buy their direct-reading instruments for their entries into a Permit-Required Confined Space? Do we rely on them to maintain their meters on their own at their own expense? You may be laughing, but what is the difference in application towards the critical aspects of the electrical worker using a meter and workers using direct-reading gas meters for their entries?
Imagine the variation that creeps (dare I say FLOODS) into our ESRWPs when we do NOT provide and manage the volt meters our qualified electrical workers use dozens of times daily.