Powerlines Risk
Worksafe NZ have released a media statement regarding CPA 2022 Limited which was involved in an electrocution incident involving scaffolding. The result was a worker was severely electrocuted, loosing both arms post event, and requiring substantial care and support going forward.
There were a number of basic things that contributed to this event, with the key one being:
Risk Management: powerline / electrocution risk was identified at the scaffold installation stage and a ‘close approach consent was obtained from the lines company. A key requirement under this consent was that the same crew installing the scaffold were to dismantle the scaffold as they received the training. This did not happen and a new crew did the dismantling.
WorkSafe commented that “Anyone working in or around electricity, especially high voltage lines, needs to be aware of the specific requirements that come with Close Approach Consents. Lines companies can assist with the consent process if needed. For a seemingly simple communication breakdown to have such far-reaching consequences is horrendous.”
This is a good reminder for all of us to review that we are making smart decisions regarding overhead and underground risks and that we are capturing the evidence to support that. This applies to all industries, not just construction.
Below I share a few observations on practices that are quite common and that could be improved. You may resonate with some of these?
SSSP’s and Risk Identification: often, a SSSP can be done from the office with no specific link to the actual risks on site. Overhead powerlines and underground utilities are the more common risks. Can these be identified at the front end of the job? Yes! Practically speaking you will want to as often there are costs involved in managing them and it makes sense to pass these costs on. So that should be motivation enough to capture them without even touching on the human impact.
Updating SSSP’s: once a job starts, we may identify additional risks. What do we do with these? Where do we record these if we record them at all?
A SSSP is meant to be a ‘live’ document so updating it would make good sense and sharing the updated copy with all and sundry. Or perhaps you can update the Task Analysis or even have it documented via a toolbox meeting - please note the next bullet point though.
Workers: identifying risks and updating documents is only a small part of the process – have we updated our workers on the controls? A scenario we see so often is we hold a toolbox meeting and discuss site risks. Yes, powerlines is discussed as a risk. Great. Unfortunately, the toolbox minutes only notes that there is a powerline risk but nothing recorded as to what the controls are. This makes life rather difficult as we have missed out capturing the key information we need to capture – how we actually manage the risk!