I'm new to this site and have serious concerns at work. At my last place of employment I was considered green, at my new one... it appears as though I am one of 2 of the most qualified. Last week we had an arc blast incident that gave minor burns to our "senior tech / instructor" and a new hire (2 days after 6 mo. probation), who was severely burned for holding the flashlight too close. The first responder (who got off probation 1 day prior) has had ZERO CPR training in his life. From the pressure / knowledge that I have shown I have been invited to an upper management meeting to try to help / teach them to be safe......................................
I want to be prepared but still don't know how much they are willing to invest. I am working nights and should be in bed right now. I'm happy to put in the time if they will back me. Rumor has it (before this serious incident) that they just want to cover their a**. At this point, when I am called in, I would like to share my past training record (which they have expressed interest in) and know the laws governing Texas / fed for what a qualified electrical worker entails. I'm from California and have always been confused with Ca - vs -fed.

Where do you work? If you don't mind me asking.

OK WG,
That doesn't sound like a very good start to any new job.
My first question would be, why on earth is a senior technician working on equipment live in the first place?.
Next question would be, what caused the arc-blast to happen?, was it an un-insulated tool dropped into a live bus system or the like?.

It sounds to me that there was very little PPE worn by the new fella, why is this?.
If you want to instill an environment of safety in a new hire, you give them all the PPE they require as they walk in the door.
That has been the way that any company that I have ever worked for has done things.

Workplace safety is not a set of rules and regulations, it is a mind-set, if you don't have that culture instilled into people you are wasting your time pretty much.

What sort of experience do you have in this area (ie Safety tuition)?.
With regards to the 1st responder having no CPR experience, that has IMO been caused by management hiring the wrong person.
I mean good lord, any idiot knows that if you are required to respond to an emergency, some sort of actual training is important.

WG,
If you have any questions or anything, please by all means, ask away, this is what this area is for.

BTW, Welcome to ECN, mate.
Cheers,
Mike.

In Tx, there aren't many laws protecting workers.
As for working on a live control panel, a great % of troubleshooting control circuits requires it to be live.
One nationaly known company that I worked for, this wasn't a problem, it was company policy that the high voltage circuits be in the right hand side of the cabinet and the controls be in the left hand side of the cabinet. as I was leaving them, they also required that all 460+ circuits have plexi-glass shields over the exposed portions.......