Having a formal electrical safety policy in place and following through with it are necessary steps in preventing tragic deaths such as the one that occurred in Bunbury, Western Australia, back in 2013.
This year the judge ruled the qualified electrician’s actions as “careless” and that he made “erroneous decisions” during the job where 18-year-old Jayden Zapelli, an electrician’s helper, was killed. The company, JCW Electrical, was charged with not providing a safe work environment and also fined.
Other issues around this incident, according to Worksafe Commissioner Lex McCulloch, include allowing unqualified people to work on the job and not performing proper de-energization safety checks with a known working meter.
Here at E-Hazard, we stress the importance of before and after meter verification checks when testing a circuit for lack of voltage. Along with lock out/tag out/verification steps, this ensures that the circuit has been placed in an electrically safe work condition.
