Question

A 40-year-old male meter technician had just completed a seven-week basic lineman training course. He worked as a meter technician during normal working hours and as a line during unplanned outages. One evening, he was called to repair a power outage at your company. By the time he arrived at the site of the outage, he had already worked two hours of overtime and worked 14 straight hours the day before. At the site, a tree limb had fallen across an overhead power line. The neutral wire in the line was severed and the two energized 120-volt wires were disconnected. The worker removed the tree limb and climbed up a power pole to reconnect the three wires. He was wearing insulated gloves, a hard hat, and safety glasses. He prepared the wires to be connected. While handling the wires, one of the energised wires caught the cuff of his left glove and pulled the cuff down. The conductor contacted the victim's forearm near the wrist. He was electrocuted and fell backwards. Paramedics arrived five minutes after the contact. Firefighters lowered his dead body 30 minutes later. Based on the report, it is vital that this kind of accident should never have happened again. The upper management wants you to create based on the incident that happened, formulate a 10 Step Safety Operating Procedure (SOP) that can cover the element of hazard and mistakes being done. The SOP should have their own justification on why it is needed.

Answer 1

1. The work of power outages are to be handled by experienced linemen. This is a critical task and inexperienced men may not handle it properly and may cause damage to life and property.

2. Inexperienced linemen have to be trained on the job, before allowed to work independently. This is for the above mentioned reason.

3.Assignment of work should be based on experience and the work should be logged. This is to ensure that the tasks are assigned appropriately.

4. The working hours of the workers such as linemen should be recorded. They should not be allowed to work more than their working hours. Fatigue may lead to lack of good work.

5.Workers should be encouraged to be vocal about the issues they face during work. They are the ones to experience issues firsthand and only they can better be able to tell what they face and how to resolve it.

6. Insulated gloves with long cuffs should be used. This is to ensure hands remain protected from the current.

7. Insulated outfits which secures the workers from unwarranted situations needs to be used.

8. In cases involving heavy voltage, minimum of 2 linemen should be allowed to handle a task, so that they may guide each other and prevent mistakes.

9.Emergency services such as medical and firefighting services should be handily available to prevent delay. Delays can cost lives.

10. Safety procedures have to be periodically reviewed and updated to ensure best safety measures are in place.