Is your electric room safe? If you haven’t maintained it and don’t know where to start, check out these five simple tips to improve safety. The best part about these tips? They’re cost effective!
Tip #1 – Spring Cleaning
Keep your electric room clean. Below are some specific cleaning tasks that should be performed regularly.
- Sweep the floor
- Remove trash
- Remove unused equipment
- Remove non-electrical system equipment
- Replace light fixture bulbs
- Seal the room from dust
Tip #2 – Annual and Preventative Maintenance
Take the time to perform preventative maintenance tasks annually.
- Tighten connections
- Cycle the breakers
- Verify all fuses are a matching set
- Review settings in equipment to match the last Coordination/Arc Flash study that was performed
- Ask your local Electrical supply house to generate a list of spare parts
- Install spare parts shelving
- Pressurize the room
Tip #3 – Safety Precautions
Install proper signage and equipment in your electric room.
- Install proper safety signage
- Ensure PPE and lock-out tag equipment is readily available
- Ensure all guards and covers are installed
- Plug unused holes in equipment
- Properly secure all enclosures and raceways
- Install panic hardware on doors and have them swing out of the room
- Install insulating mats for working clearance issues
Tip #4 – Proper Documentation
Use current and proper documentation.
- Redline drawings to match equipment
- Post base documentation and charts in either paper, poster or IPAD format
- Create a directory for each motor and its locations in the electric room to facilitate lock-out/tag-out
Tip #5 – Good Labels
Always label equipment to match documentation; this includes:
- Switchboards
- MCCs
- Panelboards
