In this edition, Daniel Lissa talks about recognising hazards and reporting incidents. Daniel is the electrical senior supervisor at Nilsen Morwell and has 25 years experience in the electrical industry.

An electrician about to insert a fuse wedge into a client’s switchboard noticed it had an exposed screw head and realised the screw could be alive and easily touched. The original insulated cap over the screw head was missing.

The electrician reported the incident as a near miss and filed a workplace incident report to the contractor and the client.

Missing insulation caps on fuse wedges are common as the caps are sometimes dislodged during testing. The risks from this widespread hazard were not fully recognised previously.

The potential risk from the missing caps on fuses was investigated and staff consulted on possible controls to reduce the risk.

This process resulted in the implementation of a procedure to replace the missing caps with a sealing compound product (a voltage rated to 1000V and temperature rated to 80 degrees) which complies with all standards.

Toolbox meetings were held at our Latrobe Valley sites to make workers aware of the issue and the control to be implemented when missing caps were discovered.

A number of presentations were given at various sites around the Latrobe Valley and received a positive reception across the power industry and other contractor representatives.

We have also been asked to repeat the presentation at the next Latrobe Valley Power Generators Forum, where all sectors of the industry will be updated about the hazard and its control.

All of this came about because a worker recognised a hazard and followed procedures and took the time to report it.