Maintenance must be based on inspection of electrical equipment as installed. Insulation, wiring, connections, and leads must be visually inspected for evidence of stress, damage, or deterioration. See NFPA 70B 4.2.2 and 15.3.1.
Maintenance must be done considering the current condition of maintenance and potential risks. Where manufacturer’s recommendations are insufficient, NFPA 70B supplies guidance. See NFPA 70B 4.2.3.
Electrical equipment must be kept contaminant-free. See NFPA 70B 15.3.2.2.
Safety equipment must be mechanically serviced and operation physically verified. For instance, a circuit breaker must be operable. See NFPA 70B 15.3.4.
Infrared testing, resistance tests, overcurrent trip tests, and other verifications of safe operation-as-intended must be done and documented. See NFPA 70B 15.3.5.
If you are interested in finding out how to protect yourself and others from potential electrical accidents, we offer training seminars to help get you caught up to speed on NFPA 70E requirements. We can even come to your facility to provide the training.
To learn more about our training program involving Electrical Safe Work Practices and Safety Related Maintenance, please get in touch with Westley Hall at 859.422.3347 or whall@henderson-services.com.
According to OSHA Standard 1910 (B)(1)-Employees who work with electricity must be trained in 1910.331 (Qualified vs Unqualified persons) and 1910.335 (Safeguards for personnel protection)
The requirement is that an individual be trained on NFPA-70E every 3 years or after the new standard is released (which comes out every 3 years). It is the employers responsibility to ensure if the worker has been trained on the newest standard of NFPA-70E in that time frame that they receive and have on file that certificate of completion.
NFPA-70B has technically always been "required", in a round about way. OSHA never enforced it in the past but did outline in their standards that the only way to comply with electrical related topics was to use NFPA-70B/E as an outline. For example, OSHA standard 1910.269 says that a facility should have a study to prevent/protect worker injury from arches and flames from electrical equipment and they list NFPA-70B/E as the roadmap to achieve this. It can be found in NFPA-70E 130.3 and 130.5.
Other reasons it is now required include employee/contractor protection and safety, risk reduction, machine/electrical equipment breakdown, unexpected downtime which leads to long lead times on world products etc.
