The city I work for is building a new water treatment plant on a 230 acre site with several well houses that are currently in various stages of construction. Some well houses were constructed over two years ago under previous contracts, but none of them are completely finished. I am an electronics tech for the city water department and will be working in this plant. Since I am a licensed master electrician, I have been doing all of the electrical change orders for this project. The electrical contractor installed the equipment in the well houses and I wired some of the motors. The motor wiring was not in the electricians contract and the city refuses to give the electrical contractor any extra work.
The well houses are small round structures and there is insufficient safe working space around all of the electrical equipment (See layout below). They were improperly designed and constructed that way. I discussed the safety issue with my supervisor and informed him that I would not work on any equipment while energized until they enlarged the buildings to meet code. His reply was that the buildings would not be rebuilt, that we would have to find a way to make it work, and that I was just trying to get out of doing the work. That pissed me off, so I talked to my department head about the safety hazard. Again, I was told that the buildings would not be rebuilt and he needed time to research this. The city electrical inspector agrees with me but I think his hands are tied since this is a city project and one of the city's engineering staff is doing the onsite inspections.
While working in one of the well houses, I noticed one light fixture go off when the electric heater came on, so I wrote a work order to repair the problem. I will not work on it energized due to the insufficient safe working space, so my supervisor hired an electrical contractor to check the problem. I heard about this and informed him that this is an OHSA violation. I wrote a memo to my department head detailing the NEC (110-26) and OSHA (1910.303, 1926.403) violations. That got the wheels turning on resolving this issue.

Now tell me:

If NEC 110-26 only applies to energized equipment, how can you check voltage without safe working space? Or program the PLC in the control panel?
Should the buildings be rebuilt to comply with 110-26?
If the buildings are not rebuilt, should I contact OSHA?

I look forward to your comments and remember, SAFETY FIRST.



[This message has been edited by sparks55 (edited 04-04-2002).]

Sparks,

I'm a contractor.....if the city called me in to work on this I would do it.

If I was your boss, you'd have to be an extremely valuable and hard to replace employee for me to not be plotting your departure.

If I was a city taxpayer and had to pay to rebuild the pump houses....I'd be pissed.

It's not a perfect world....get over it.

GJ

We all decide what jobs we will work on and which we will not.

While the building may not meet the current code, it may meet the code at the time it was built.

In any case, the building may be exempt by statute from the code.

don't mean to rub no one the wrong way on this.so hear we go putting the costs of something first for the value of a human life.sparks55 has a good point safety should be first. maybe you guys might do it , but i'd be with sparks 55 on this & maybe it is exempt.that just shows you where a little money can get you.i'd rather loose my job than my life over something like this.heard & read quite a few cases of someone getting hurt or killed due to in sufficent space. hey guys i mean would you really work on omething like this?

golf junkie,

Thank you for your response.

I am a taxpayer in this city and I am not pleased with paying to rebuild the pump houses. I was a contractor before taking the city job and I always stressed safety to my employees. As an employee, I want to work safely. That is why we have OSHA. I question your motive to work in an unsafe situation. What is the purpose of NEC 110-26 and OHSA 1926.403(i)? Why are you willing to ignore safety to make a buck? I pray for you and your employees, if you have any. Safety is not an accident, it prevents them.

sparks55

Have you considered purchasing a rubber blanket in the event you are forced to troubleshoot some of this equipment.
In many industrial plants working space violations are a fact of life. If personal safety is your main concern, a rubber blanket would help.

In the "real world", yes it is a fact of life that we can't always control the abuse of our working space requirements. However, I do share in your frustration. I constantly run into working space problems, some require some fancy contortions to get to!

It's also pretty hard to draw a line of what we will accept as a mere bending of the rules and what we will reject as breaking them.

Stand by what you believe in...

Sparks,

Sorry if I came off confrontational.

Bottom line is everyone has to make this call for themselves. Like you suggested, if you feel it's unsafe, kill the power before you touch it.

GJ

Thanks for your responses. This whole project was started over 3 years ago. None of the well houses are finished and the control panels aren't even wired yet. They still must comply with all building codes, even if constructed two years ago. Use of PPE does not exempt anyone from the NEC and OSHA requirement for safe working space, although rubber blankets may reduce the required space from 42" to 36" deep. I don't have a problem working on live equipment as long as there is enough space. Each of us can decide what risks we take, but the NEC and OSHA rules were written to reduce that risk. Would you work in a live 480V starter when the door opens less than 45 degrees?

Update on resolving the safety issue:

My supervisor said a meeting with the engineer is planned for this week with a directive from the city to make the well houses safe. This means whatever it takes. Here is a quote from the spec book:

"Installations must be entirely safe in every respect, and must not create any condition of any kind which will be harmful to any occupant of building, to operating personnel, to installation personnel, to testing personnel, to workmen, and to public; contractor for each installation shall be solely responsible for providing installations which will meet these conditions. If contractor believes that installation will not be safe for all parties, he shall so report in writing to the Engineer before any equipment is purchased or work is installed, giving his exact recommendations."

Kind of hard to argue with that!

sparks55

good job sparks 55!let us know how it goes.

Just looking at the diagram, I would say the engineer could re-arrange a few things and get most, if not all of the required working clearances. However, you are in a better position to make that call. Many times, as a designer, I will make re-arrangement in my equipment layouts to get better working clearances. I would rather do that than rebuild the "round houses". (Why are they round anyway?)
Just something to think about.

Warren1,

The current discussion with the engineer is to relocate everything. Rebuilding would be the last resort. The distribution panel, lighting panel, control panel, and pump starter must meet minimum clearance since they will most likely require troubleshooting while energized. The transformer and disconnects don't require servicing while energized and won't need as much clearance. The transformer cannot be below the disconnects, but could be hung from the ceiling. I don't know why it wasn't done that way in the first place. The copper water line and PVC drains can be relocated to allow clearance for the panels. Some well houses have less space than this one because of more equipment. All the maintenance guys in our department wondered why they were round. That was the biggest complaint when we first looked at them. Wouldn't have cost much more to have made them larger. It's gonna cost a hell of a lot more now!

sparks55

Stick to you guns there. Sounds like your on the right path. You are a rate payer/tax payer and you have first hand knowledge of these problems,. You might be competent enough to work safely around these areas as they are, everyone may not, Thats the reason behind the code, to help protect everyone. Water plants last a long time and you won't be there forever, so by getting this took care of now you are saving everybody money now as it would cost much more to fix it later after someone gets hurt or even killed. You must however be tactful when stating you point, firm but tactful. I work for the local water plant here in town too. We have a large resivoir instead of the wells. I guess the only thing here I don't care for is the 2400 VAC all our pumps run on. We have a direct feed 7 miles from town and 2400 Volts coming out of own Xformer bank and 2400 VAC MCC 25 years old. Its all coming out next year going back with 480/277 thank god.