Occupational Electrical Safety: Advanced Topics in Engineering and Safety Management

The basics of occupational electrical safety involves compliance with regulations, codes and standards that provide minimum requirements for safe installations and safe work practices. This tutorial discusses four evolving and leading edge developments in advanced safety management with significant potential for accelerating further improvements in prevention of serious injuries and fatalities from electrical hazards. These topics are: 1) the benefits of moving beyond simple compliance and incorporating a risk based approach to reduce residual risk, 2) system safety engineering as an approach integrating application of engineering and management principles, criteria, and techniques to achieve risk as low as reasonably practicable, 3) safety management systems, and 4) the growing  movement in safety management focusing on hazards with high potential for life changing injury and fatality. Case histories will provide practical examples that attendees can use to assess and reduce risk of serious injuries.

After completion of the tutorials, participants will:
- Be able to describe the benefits of engineering risk controls as compared to administrative controls
- Be able to identify the limitations of a compliance – based safety culture
- Be able to apply risk assessment to reduce residual risk of a compliance only approach.
- Be able to differentiate and manage low frequency/high consequence safety risk from high frequency/low consequence safety risk.