Best practices

I say do it by the book and protect yourself and your employer.

Company Prosecuted After Worker Dies In MEWP Fall | UK Construction News

Z.

Do it right I say. Don't bodge stuff.

Landlord and electrician are sentenced over death of boy, 7, who was electrocuted in beer garden | Daily Mail Online

Z.

If a company vehicle is really unroadworthy you do exactly as I outlined above, and wait for the instruction before driving it. BUT are you qualified to know of its faults completely? IF the fault is technical (beyond your reasonable understanding) the law says your employer is responsible (HSAW act) but you must act reasonably, so a flat tyre is within your understanding. If you were stopped with a fault outside your reasonable understanding then your defence is that your employer provided an unroadworthy vehicle, that you could not reasonably recognise as defective. Your book Z is rather curious, the second example that you have shown us before, is because a fool acts outside his knowledge zone and pretends to be something he obviously isn't ("a competent electrician"). I am beginning to feel that you have a “worry” problem, perhaps caused by reading lurid press reports. Very few electricians are prosecuted, many carry out seriously defective work!

Zoomup: 
 

davezawadi (David Stone): 
 

The situation is not quite as you see it MrJack96. I am not surprised you are being seen as a “jobsworth”, as you are effectively doing just that. In situations like this, you are not at the end of the chain of responsibility, and in fact, you can, and should, easily shift it elsewhere. This is done by reporting in writing to your supervisor or manager the details of the problem and ask them for clarification of what should be done about it. I suggest the best way to report is using the BS7671 inspection report form, you only need to fill in the parts relevant to the problem, sign and date it as the inspector, copy it, and send the original to the manager etc. Keep the copy, the original may be filed or lost and a question could be asked later!

It is worth noting that you need to be careful that your report is accurate, particularly measured values such as Zs and R1+R2, and you refer to the regulation and table numbers which are not complied with. In theory (and legally) your employer should have some kind of incident reporting scheme in place, and a mechanism to ensure that reports are dealt with properly.

As far as your actual worries go, the SWA armour should be fine as the CPC, its resistance is less than the conductors up to at least 50mm2 size if it is a BS type. The Zs max for 63A BS88s is 0.68 ohms for 5 seconds and 0.36 ohms for 0.4 seconds disconnection (Table 41-2 and 41-4), so you are about halfway between the two, about 3 seconds. The question to ask “is this a distribution circuit or a final circuit?”. This can be a bit tricky to answer, and really you need to know what the original EIC says. However, if there are any more CPDs in the circuit to the motor you probably fall under 5 seconds disconnection and you have not told us the size of the motor but I suspect it is less than 40kW, thus not consuming 63A! 

Thus your finding of “unsafe conditions” may well not be valid, the IR does not really matter and the disconnection of about 4 seconds (assuming your measurements are accurate, they may be quite a way out) may be quite valid if this is considered a distribution circuit. Did you disconnect the machine to get the IR? It is very likely that a piece of equipment can have a much lower value, and your BS7671 source is out of scope outside of the fixed wiring!

I have no idea of your level of experience, but you need to realise that safety is a matter for a chain of responsibility, which is fully explained in the relevant legislation. Your duty ends if you make a report to the next step of the chain for a decision, it is certainly not up to you to decide to stop a factory because you find a relatively minor problem. That is a decision well above your pay grade! Some others who also post here seem to have a problem with this as well, it is brought on by many tutors who have the same worry and do not understand the principles of H&S. We often use the car MOT as an example, the inspector will give you a list of any faults and if serious will suggest that you do not drive away, he will NOT try to hide the keys! You are in the same position, you advise the boss of problems, he will tell you to fix them or not, and if you are not happy get the ignore instruction in writing or see the next in the line above him. The last resort is given to you on the factories act notice that should be posted, it is the report number for the HSE, but you can always find the number on the net. Any action against you for the report will then be wrongful sanction or dismissal. That is the “non-jobsworth” route and much safer for you!

David CEng etc.

I worked for a company once that supplied a company vehicle. The vehicle was legally unroadworthy. One day I refused to drive it. Who would have been fined if I was stopped by the police, me or the company?

 

Z.

If you were provided a unroadworthy company vehicle that was illegal i.e bare tread, overweight, broken headlights, horn not working then if the employee/driver did decide to drive it even if he complained to his line manager or not, then if stopped by the police, both the driver and the company would be fined.

I speak from experience as one of our vans wa stopped for being overweight, taken to official weighbridge and driver was cautioned and reported, after all it was him that loaded the van, so eventual points and fine on his licence. Approx two weeks after the van had been stopped, two traffic police appeared at our office, asked for the company Secretary ( After all they are the legal entity in a Ltd Company) Secretary was asked to confirm registration of van belonged to our company and when he said yes, the Secretary as the rep of the company was also cautioned and reported, thus at court company was prosecuted for failure to provide safe system of ensuring only safe and roadworthy vans on the road.

We may just have been unlucky, but then again it was seriously overweight with drums of cable going to a site.

GTB

Zoomup: 
I worked for a company once that supplied a company vehicle. The vehicle was legally unroadworthy. One day I refused to drive it. Who would have been fined if I was stopped by the police, me or the company?

I don't think that this is a particularly good analogy. The real question is whether you would have had a claim for unfair dismissal had you been sacked for refusing to drive the vehicle.

So if you took a serviceable vehicle and were caught for speeding, quite rightly you would be penalised. Search for “frolic of your own” and you will see further examples where an employer is not liable for the employee's acts.

Back to electrickery. If in the course of your normal duties you re-energise a circuit which you have found to be non-compliant, you will not be personally liable. However, if you are curious to know what would happen if, for example, you knowingly overloaded a circuit and harm ensued, you would be responsible because not being a part of your normal authorised work, it would have been a frolic of your own.

Employment law is complicated, but generally, if you are an employee, you have nothing to worry about when things go wrong.

davezawadi (David Stone): 
 

If a company vehicle is really unroadworthy you do exactly as I outlined above, and wait for the instruction before driving it. 

Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. If the lights don't work, or the horn doesn't work, or the indicators are faulty,  then it is blatantly obvious that the vehicle is not legal to drive. I would not wait for any instruction from my employer about the issue, it is clear cut.

An employer has no right to get me to break the law or carry out anything that is dangerous to me or others.

Z.

Chris Pearson: 
 

Zoomup: 
I worked for a company once that supplied a company vehicle. The vehicle was legally unroadworthy. One day I refused to drive it. Who would have been fined if I was stopped by the police, me or the company?

I don't think that this is a particularly good analogy. The real question is whether you would have had a claim for unfair dismissal had you been sacked for refusing to drive the vehicle.

 

The real issue is, do I want points on my licence and a fine?

Z.

Just allowing an “exposure to risk” is sufficient to allow a prosecution under U.K. law.

See……

MrJack96: 
Yeah I’m thinking the R2 value would probably be a bit bigger then R1. How does that work in practice. I know I’m the regs it states that If ADS cannot be met supplementary bonding has to be used to keep touch voltages bellow 50v I thought this was between conductive parts (referenced to earth) but what about hand to foot in an outside location  ? 

After working through the relevant regulations I ended up at 419.3. This concerns limiting the Voltage between simultaneously accessible-extraneous conductive-parts and exposed-conductive-parts to 50 Volts A.C. max.

As it is not possible to bond the ground, the only solution is to wear electrically insulating gloves and footwear when working on the machines outdoors.

Z.

I am afraid I do not follow your points at all Z. If the lights etc don't work in a company van, how do you get them fixed without telling the boss that something needs to be done? The situation with overweight vehicles is difficult because many places where they may be loaded do not have weighing facilities. A few have on-board weighing, large rubble trucks, etc, and some may be loaded by loaders that do weigh each bucket load. Light vans are the biggest problem because the load capacity is quite small and a few heavy objects like drums of cables can easily take them overweight. For some reason, the DSA love to find overweight vehicles, but being 5% overweight really should not take one into the area of inadequate braking or any structural issues, strangely they are quite touchy about a few 10s of kg on a 44 tonner, or slightly variable axle loads.