Lockout tagout and safe isolation

David Sweetman, Marketing & Business Development Director at Di-LOG, discusses the importance of safe isolation, lockout and tagout.

Every electrician with experience working on a busy site knows how it feels to take responsibility for the other tradesmen around them. When you are dealing with live electricity there’s no room for calculated risks and educated guesses. The only way you can ensure your own and your colleagues’ safety is by adopting adequate safe isolation procedures.

For electrical systems where the supply has been cut off to allow dead working, Regulation 13 of the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 applies as follows:

“Adequate precautions shall be taken to prevent electrical equipment, which has been made dead in order to prevent danger while work is carried out on or near that equipment, from becoming electrically charged during that work if danger may thereby arise.”

This establishes a clear requirement to ensure that conductors and equipment may not be inadvertently energised. In other words, safe isolation.

In practice, this means not only cutting off the supply, but also ensuring the method of disconnection is secured in the ‘off’ position and a caution notice or label is posted at the point of disconnection.

The only way you can ensure your own and your colleagues’ safety is by adopting adequate safe isolation procedures

HSE statistics

According to the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences Regulations (RIDDOR), and although it is difficult to know how many of the following statistics were caused by inadequate safe isolation, in the five years between 2017 and 2022, there were 531 non-fatal incidents and 24 fatalities reported to the HSE which were caused by contact with electricity.

The number of fatalities did drop dramatically during 2019 and 2020 due to COVID-19, however, this does translate that you have roughly a one in 22 chance of being fatally injured if you are involved in an electrical incident in the UK. Just to put this into a little more perspective, this is a dramatic difference in comparison to the one in 500 from other causes.

Safe isolation procedures

With the 18th Edition AM2 now in full effect, safe isolation is continuing to be enforced across the industry, especially by bodies such as NICEIC and NAPIT. Although nothing has changed in the way of the testing requirement on installation test equipment, safe isolation is critical for the safety of yourself and the others around you.

Isolation of equipment or circuits using the main switch or distribution board switch disconnector is the preferred method. The method of isolation should be locked off using a unique key, retained by the person carrying out the work, and a caution notice posted at the point of isolation.

Where more than one operative is working on a circuit, a multi-lock hasp can be used to prevent the operation of the main isolator until such time as all persons working on the installation have completed their work and removed their padlocks from the hasp.

Proving dead isolated equipment or circuits

Following the isolation of equipment or circuits and before starting work, it should be proved that the area you are about to work on is, in fact, dead. The recommended method for doing this is by use of a test lamp or a two-pole tester (as recommended in HSE Guidance Note 38).

The test lamp or voltage detector should be proven to be working on a known live source or a proprietary proving unit. All line, neutral, and protective conductors should be tested to prove they are dead.

Electricians who regularly work on installations that have been energised should be equipped with devices for proving that conductors are dead. Di-LOG’s latest range of safety equipment for working on LV electrical equipment includes an array of lockout kits, ranging from a simple single MCB ‘Personal Lockout Kit’ for isolation of individual circuits to the industrial ‘Expert Lockout Kit’ with mostly fully insulated lockout devices for virtually all individual and main sources of energisation.

Proving Unit Kits

The DLPK6700 Series includes the DLPK6780 and DLPK6790 Voltage Indicator Proving Unit Kits, incorporating the PU690 voltage indicator proving unit and the DL6700 Series Voltage Indicators. CAT IV rated CombiVolt series of voltage indicators are fully compliant with GS38, BS 612433:2014 and are fully operational to 690V AC/ DC, even when the batteries are discharged.

The Di-LOG DLPK6700 series kits come packaged in the company’s bespoke carry pouch fitted with a durable carrying strap and belt loop making them compact, lightweight, and ergonomically designed.