This is a question that continues to be raised the farther down the NFPA® 70B® rabbit hole I fall. It stems from a lack of understanding of what really goes into an effective electrical maintenance program (EMP).
This might be a bit of a controversial statement, but I am going to say it anyway: performing IR scans is not the same as maintaining your electrical equipment. This would essentially be the equivalent of taking your car into the dealer for a regularly scheduled maintenance interval check and all the dealer mechanic does is hook the digital scanner tool up and read the codes, or lack thereof, and give your car back saying that maintenance was performed.
IR scans are simply a data-gathering tool we can use as part of the bigger EMP. So, let’s get into what an actual EMP entails.
What does NFPA 70B require?
If you haven’t already, head over to NFPA 70B and check out what Chapter 4 has to say about what goes into an EMP. First off, just like NFPA 70E requires for the electrical safety program, we need to establish the principles and controls that our EMP will be based on and how we will measure the success of the EMP. After all, a lot of work is going into drafting this program. You want to set goals and ensure the program is helping you achieve them.
The EMP should address both reliability and safety. Make sure that the EMP is not just built on reducing downtime but also remember that NFPA 70E makes a big deal about reducing arc flash and shock hazard risks by making sure equipment stays in a normal operating procedure.
Additionally, the EMP will detail personnel requirements. Who is going to serve as the EMP coordinator? What qualifications must personnel obtain if they are going to perform maintenance tests and tasks? What training will these folks need to be able to perform these tasks in a safe and accurate manner?
There is a bunch of personnel responsibility and expectations that will go into the EMP, and this follows very closely with the electrical safety program. I have often said safety and maintenance are so closely related that it is almost impossible to have a maintenance program without safety, and vice versa.
The EMP must also have elements that strive for continuous improvement of the EMP and the safety and reliability of the facility. Incident investigations, maintenance audits, program review and revision, and incorporating design for maintainability are all required elements of the EMP.
However, section 4.2.4.2(8) discusses how the EMP must include a process to prescribe, implement, and document corrective measures taken based on the collected data. I understand why we need to determine how to fix the problems we discover, but why would the EMP need us to document the corrective measures taken?
An EMP is a plan of ACTION!
An effective EMP is all about acting and taking steps to ensure that we lower the risk in our facility.
Back to the original question. You have taken an IR scan and got this amazingly well-put-together report; now what? Remember, the IR scan is just a data-collection tool. But it is a waste of time and money if we simply stop it at that.
If the end goal of an EMP is ultimately to establish a safe and reliable workplace, we want to go beyond just scanning for problems that have already occurred, and we want to investigate and ensure that our electrical equipment will do its thing when we need it to do that thing it does.
Does an IR scan tell us the tripping speed of a circuit breaker? Does an IR scan show us that moving parts are properly lubricated? Will an IR scan tell us that the relay in a ground-fault protection system has failed? We are going to need more than just IR scans from the sound of it!
The point here is that when performing maintenance testing, we are the electrical version of Sherlock Holmes. We are performing tasks to gather enough information about our system to determine a plan for fixing the broken stuff and ensuring the unbroken stuff stays that way.
Plan-Do-Check-Act! Nowhere is this more important than the EMP; this is why the EMP exists.
Now, before some friends of mine have a field day in the comments, I need to make it crystal clear that IR scans are a major part of this process and are a very valuable tool in assessing the health of an electrical system. IR scans can find things that even the very well-trained eye would miss. And for that reason, facilities having IR scans performed are miles ahead of those that are doing nothing for electrical maintenance. But we need to remember that the sum of the whole is always much larger than an individual component.
So, the next time you hear someone say that their maintenance program is taking IR scans, ask a follow-up question, “And then what?”
Until next time, stay safe and always remember to test before you touch!
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