Safety Considerations While Working at a Private or Public Utility

Both Private and Public utilities are now contracting with firms to perform Operations, Maintenance, and Testing where the contractor will isolate the equipment, perform the tasks, and then restore facility to operations. The industry publications for creating an electrically safe work condition to perform work are, NFPA 70E 2021 which does not cover “installations under the exclusive control of an electric utility” and IEEE C2 2017 which “Applies to the: Public, Utility workers (Employees and Contractors), and Utility Facilities”. IEEE C2 provides a great deal of information but by no means does it provide the detailed information to safely perform work, in the place of experienced utility trained employees. This paper will start to explore the safety issues while working at private and public utilities that are not covered under the referenced documents and identify the issues the Electrical Contractor (EC) are presented with when performing work for a customer.