A little background first.

I am a master licensed electrician who works for a large county jail in Texas. There are 15 maint guys with one licensed electrician and one licensed HVAC man.

My old boss was an engineer and pretty much left me alone as long as I fixed what was broke.

We got a new boss, he is a sergeant in the corrections dept. In other words he is a guard supervisor. This is actually good as he has more experince supervising than the engineer did.

Now to the subject.

The new boss wants me to write up a procedure for resetting main circuit breakers in the buildings if they trip. The reason he stated was so he can give it to the guards in each building so that if something trips in the middle of the night they can turn it back on.

I do not know what OSHA rules are, but I consider myself a "qualified person" and have had training in stepping down and stepping up and have been involved in power ups and shut downs of large buildings in the past.

My fear is that he wants "unqualified persons" with no background in electric work to go around and close 3,000 amp breakers using the procedure that I will write.

Can anyone point to an OSHA rule regarding throwing large breakers and or discos? Does the person even need to be "qualified"?

My feelings are real simple, if the main breaker blows you need to find out WHY before you start turning things on. Thats what they pay me for.


Many thanks for any advice.

Here is a link to osha page that talks about what you are asking. You can also look up the information online or look for the local office in your area and call them for guidence.
http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_table=INTERPRETATIONS&p_id=24009

Dumb question:

Does your site have a significant problem with nuisance tripping of the main breakers? As in the main breaker trips, you go out and try to find the source of the problem, find nothing wrong, and then essentially 'turn it on' again without having to fix anything?

I'd think that nuisance tripping on the main breaker indicates a problem with protection coordination which needs to be fixed, rather than patched by having unqualified persons restore service. If you don't have nuisance trips on the main breakers, then unqualified persons shouldn't be trying to restore service...they don't know what's gone wrong to cause the trip in the first place.

Note: I have _zero_ experience with large switch gear and breakers.

-Jon

jlh,

Very nice link!

With the experience i have over the past 10yrs I personnely wouldn't let guards reset large breakers. If they want to let them reset general 120v breakers thats fine unless they continue to trip. But as for 3,000 amp no way in you know what would i let them. I would write the procedure that they have to call qualified person such as yourself or one of the other maintenance men. To many things can go wrong.

Drillman,
OSHA is an ace in the hole on this one, but check out the ACA standards as well.

I worked at a large prison for 7 years (as a matter of fact, it was Lorton Prison and they shipped half our boys down your way when they closed down) and Correctional staff was NEVER allowed to reset.

They do NOT know how to check for fault, they are likely to close back into a fault and that will/could destroy equipment that may have been able to be repaired. IOW they have not been judged electrically qualified by your governing authority.

Suggest you try to find some videos on arc blast to convince him of the problem you may encounter with no experience in these matters.

That said, we used to let them reset NO MORE THAN a 20 amp breaker, and only once, then call us, and only off hours. Let's face it, they know if they just plugged a 1500 watt heater in 10 seconds before the breaker popped.

He is also placing the correctional staff in a precarious position. They may not want to go along with this program either.

Good luck

Thanks guys, that link was exactly what I needed. OSHA regs are kinda like the code book, its hard to find your way around without practice.

I am glad to see that you guys feel the same way I do. We have had no trouble with nusiance tripping of main breakers in the year I have been there which is why I wonder where this whole thing came from.

We did have a subpanel breaker trip in the kitchen and it was because someone sprayed water at a light switch. Not a nusiance in my book. This was a series rated system.

What is ACA standards?

Thanks again for your help.

NFPA 70 E "Standards for Electrical Safety Requirements for Employee Workplaces" is a good beginning. For Safety rules, they repeat OSHA 1926 and 1910, and I think they are easier to understand.

Part 2 Safety Related Work Practices. I'd have to ask your Sarge, if he really wants this.

Employees who are not trained with your lock out/Tag out program, cannot evaluate hazard, are unfamiliar with approach boundaries and flash hazards are NOT qualified to perform any electrical tasks.

I don't think anyone wants to see some wholesale end to people simply resetting a branch circuit, but to have a policy requiring untrained personnel to do so in the workplace invites litigation and catastrophe in the case of your jail.

The judge says "Mr. Lockdown, before the breaker blew up in your face, causing your injury, (or you started the fire on the block by repeatedly resetting a breaker into a fault, etc.) were you aware of the FLASH HAZARD ANALYSIS that is required by OSHA?" DOH!!! Did you attempt to contact qualified personnel? What's that you say, it's your policy for YOU to reset the breaker?" DOH!!!

I can understand his wanting to cut some call back costs, but this is not the area to cut, excessive call backs mean you need to look into your system and it's protection, but not to hand over control of that system in the off hours to unqualified individuals. BAD move.

70E goes into the training required for an individual to be qualified, and wearing a badge does not do it, been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.

Sorry about that, initials can become such a part of your life, I guess at jails you don't deal with ACA.

American Correctional Association.

Federal Bureau of Prisons used to have some of their standards on line, I'll try to make time to see if they still do today.

WE had a supervisor who got mad because the locksmith refused to train inmates in lock repair once........... TOP that one!!!

winnie,

Good advice, resetting a Breaker, without clearing the fault, that caused the trip beforehand is a very silly, if not stupid thing to do.
Especially with high amperage breakers, and having a dead short in a system cable, the results can be nasty!.

[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 11-14-2003).]

That's too funny, George!

Wonder what the risk mitigation plan would look like for a preventable accident due to an arc blast:

Cell doors will be
_locked _unlocked
for the duration of the electrical crisis and any follow-on conditions such as fire, flood, smoke-filled areas, etc.

Hmmm, who gets to explain this to the big kahunas when justifying a call-out pay bill vs. a preventable event at a jail?

I can see you guys have strong feelings about this subject as do I.

The boss has not brought this up yet. I noticed we are scheduled for OSHA training in Jan and my plan is to keep my mouth shut till then.

The biggest maint call out cost is plumbing by far.

George: we follow Texas Commisson on Jail Standards see this link www.tcjs.state.tx.us/
The standards are under general information.
Not much if anything on worker safety, most of the stuff involves inmate treatment.

BuggabooBren: There is in fact a procedure in event of fire and smoke. Because we do not open the jail if theres a fire, we must provide a smoke purge system. The link above will have info under general information then standards then Life Safety.

Thanks again folks

Drillman,
Yeah, we had our problems with all things being geared toward inmate problems, but we did manage our way through with some of the other regulations out there. If ya need, e-mail me, I've got more experience than anyone oughta have in this area, wish I didn't.

Bren,
I got up one Monday morning, I only live about a mile from work when I was at the prison, so you can understand mornings were a lot more leisurely then, I'm listening to the radio and hear that we had a riot overnight, and it was caused by a power outage.

Curious say I, no one called me. I get to the office, and ask everyone if they got called in, yup, says one of the guys, came in around 7pm, reset a breaker, left around 8 after securing, why?

The radio said the riot happened around midnight, at our maximum security section, can't be the outage.

Rode over to Max. Most folks think of jails/prisons as individual cells, they're really expensive, so it really doesn't happen much, but this institution it was the norm. Let's just say we did NOT keep our boy scouts in there.

There is an emergency procedure that in the event of catastrophe, major fire, you slap the mushroom button that says "All Release". Yep, that means we open ALL doors at once. In the event of an outage written procedure is to switch system to manual, switch back to auto on restoration, this is posted over the guards station, and they all know it.

But NEVER think an inmates dumb, just cause he got caught, THAT attitude can end your career.

The guard never switched back to auto, all the inmates heard the locks pop, they never said anything, cause a guard they did not like was gonna take over at shift change in 1/2 hour.

Old guard never said anything, new one starts his log, then goes to take count, means he leaves the control point, and walks the block for a physical count. He gets half way down the block, when he gets lots of company, nearly is beaten to death before the rescue team (aka: goon squad, think about 30 of your closest friends in full riot gear, protective shields with an attitude) come in and join the party.

In short, guard forgot to follow procedure, but no one ever said anything to change the medias reporting power outage. Yup, I took it personally, but who cares.

YIKES!!! My ex-#1 is a dept head at a Max unit but started his career in the custody position and said you wouldn't want to lose the upper hand for a split second so I can't imagine having events and inmates coincide to set up the conditions for such a lapse.

George: that is an intresting story, it cannot happen here however. All the control boards are on generator power, they are also on UPS power. When the lights go off the control board does not even notice it. The generators come on within 15 seconds or so. They are tested every week.

One thing I have learned from this job is that criminals love the dark. Example, the law states that a "night light" shall be provided. It is usually a 5 watt biax CF. Now the purpose of this is NOT so the inmates can see at night is is so the guards can see the inmates during counts.

Also about fires. we are required by law to have fire alarms with automatic smoke purge. What that means is if the smoke detector goes off in a unit, then a exhaust fan turns on, a makeup fan turns on, dampers open or close as needed. The AC ductwork is sometimes used to remove the smoke, it just has more air moving than during normal operation. The best part is how the State tests it. They set off a smoke bomb, yes really a smoke bomb, in the jail. The inmates are usually taken to the rec yard for this.


All in all it is an intresting job to say the least. I can take two hours to change a light bulb. First I got to drive to the building then I got to get buzzed in then got to get buzzed into the unit then got to find a spare guard to escort me then I get to the cell and find the tamperproof screws clogged up and stripped so I need to use a hammer and chisel on them. Change lamps and put new screws in to replace the ones I broke off. Oh and make damn sure I find all the broken pieces on the floor.

Just another day.

Yup,
The rascals can make shanks outta a toothbrush... seen that one before. My son makes custom knives, he has one of the best "shank" collections going......... wonder where he got those?????????

Our gensets were on line prior to 15 seconds, it just so happened this fault occurred downstream of the genset, Murphy's law don't ya know?

We used blue bulbs for our night lighting. We did not require escorts, they made us all correctional officers prior to going to work, so we got to do the work, and keep an eye out for an inmate with an attitude. Always loved Max, when I went there, there was no death penalty, so an inmate with triple life had nothing to lose. Killing you was only a diversion in his day.

Sometimes I miss it, sometimes I don't.