The most common safety risks for electrical workers boil down to two hazards—falls and electric shock. Environmental conditions, hazardous materials and moving vehicles also provide unique challenges at specific sites, though, and can be harder to identify and plan for from one site to another.

Electrical contractors and their employees can face everything from swarming bees and venomous spiders to heat waves, broken scaffolding and icy surfaces. How these unexpected risks are avoided or addressed varies from one contractor to another.

“Sometimes we tend to focus on the shiny topics like falls because they’re a leading statistical factor for fatalities and injuries … but there’s other areas, and they can tend to be our bigger challenges: the more mundane or minutiae type things,” said Barry Moreland, safety director for the NECA-IBEW Electrical Training Center in Portland, Ore.

There is a lot of risk disparity between job sites, and often those hazards can vary by day and task.

“I may have unique hazards for the job site and those are all assessed by the general contractor, electrical contractor and plumbing contractor,” said Kyle Krueger, NECA’s executive director of codes and standards. “But then day-to-day, each task that the contractor is doing,” even each employee doing it, he pointed out, “may require an additional assessment to determine any unique hazards that are specific just to that task.”

Starting with the basics

Every project starts with a site-specific safety plan, following OSHA regulations and contractors’ policies, to protect the employees. The only way to determine it is to conduct a site-specific safety assessment and develop a plan accordingly. Some hazards are unexpected, open to interpretation or without clear-cut appeasement measures.

Each customer and general contractor perceives risks and solutions differently, said Jeff Cordill, director of safety and risk management at Christenson Electric Inc., Portland, Ore. 

“One general [contractor] may be centered more about NFPA 70E, whereas the other ones are more focused on other details,” such as having the right gloves or hard hat. Acquiring a Level 2 hard hat for one site can be followed by a project in which a Level 1 helmet is fine. Electrical contractors and their safety leadership have to navigate these unpredictable requirements.”

Where one general contractor dictates an extra worker dedicated to accompanying the scissor lift, or guardrails on that scissor lift or wearing a harness while operating it, another may not.

“We’re always going to meet the general’s safety requirements regardless of what they are. They could tell us that we’ve got to wear bunny suits [protective coveralls] and that’s what we’ll do,” he said. 

On the other hand, Cordill added that their electricians’ safety is paramount, so if a general contractor wasn’t meeting Christenson Electric’s safety parameters, the electrical contractor has stepped away. Not surprisingly then, the most stringent safety requirements are the ones that the construction crew follows.

Challenging projects and redundant power

Projects differ vastly when it comes to safety risks. One potential variable centers around redundant power for sites such as data centers. In some cases, the owners and general contractors may not understand how the electrical systems work, what poses a risk and why the electric service may need to be shut off for some work.

One project owner may oppose turning off power for specific tasks, but the response to them, according to electrical contractors interviewed for this story, is “Too bad. We’re not going to put our people in danger.”

This is challenging even for experienced general contractors. In data centers, many sources of power are inherent to ensure uninterrupted power. 

“With that, it can mean that several shifts and trades may be required to be involved in the LOTO [lockout/tagout] process,” said Joe Schmitz, director of safety and training for Cannon & Wendt Electric Co. Inc., Phoenix. 

Complex LOTO requires a designated person to oversee it. Logs of lock placement and removal must be maintained in specific locations on-site. Electrical rooms need to be controlled to ensure only qualified personnel access these locations. Drawings need to be posted or available to crew so everyone can see where, and how, power is delivered to the equipment, Schmitz said.

Related challenges include job speed or pace, higher voltages distributed throughout the electrical rooms, complex energy control and the LOTO procedures themselves, said Kyreece Wappner, Cannon & Wendt’s field supervisor and safety committee member. 

All individuals are given the power to speak if they see something wrong or have questions about the work being performed, Wappner added.

“Typically, on larger projects we will have a full-time site safety coordinator to monitor that all safety protocols are being upheld consistently,” said Mark Ross, Cannon & Wendt’s field operations manager and safety committee member.

Healthcare and its related hazards

Electrical contractors that construct hospitals know that healthcare projects pose safety concerns.

“When doing remodeling or upgrading hospital facilities, our employees are required to be in close contact with hospital staff and the patients they serve,” Schmitz said. How that communication is managed can vary.

Electricians and technicians may be exposed to unique hazards, such as lead used for shielding, high-energy electron beams used for diagnostic testing and treatment or special chemicals and biohazards. Then there are the contaminations that are generated through the construction process.

Close coordination with the facility staff is critical for planning work and power outages and deciding whether compelling conditions require energized electrical work. Continuous power is crucial in a hospital environment, because lives may be at stake.

In these settings, challenges are exacerbated due to the risk of public interfaces. Efforts such as keeping patient areas clean and dust-free to avoid contamination, using environmental containment units and building temporary containment barriers have to be properly dictated and planned. Passersby must also be kept out of the construction zones.

“With these jobs, a lot of review is needed, as the facilities aren’t full construction areas,” Wappner said.

Electrical experience in safety

Having a safety director with an extensive electrical background benefits ECs. Cordill is a licensed electrician with more than two decades of work experience and has seen a lot of change in the industry. He said working with general contractors means reviewing with them well in advance of the project and ensuring the safety risks and strategies are shared and understood by all participants.

Knowing the attitudes of specific general contractors helps guide those conversations. With tighter deadlines and high project values, the demand to plan for any potential risk is higher than ever before.

“You have to be ready to recognize the unanticipated hazards,” Cordill said.

Heat and cold

Addressing the risks specific to heat for outdoor workers has been part of an initiative by OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Heath (NIOSH). The OSHA-NIOSH Heat Safety Tool App offers a real-time heat index and hourly forecasts specific to location, which is useful for planning outdoor activities each day. Users can determine whether temperatures are exceeding certain thresholds, Krueger said.

The first step is to educate the workforce on signs and symptoms of the onset of heat illness. Supervisors are instructed to talk about heat illness prevention, and reminder posters are posted around work sites.

Sometimes the most obvious tools are also the most critical—providing access to fresh, clean water on every job site. 

At larger jobs, said Schmitz, “We use full-size refrigerators located throughout the project.” He added that fans, evaporative coolers, cool towels, electrolytes and hard hat shades are other common tools in the battle against the heat.

When it comes to cold, OSHA’s general duty clause requires an employer to provide a place of employment free from recognized hazards that may result in death or physical harm. Cold falls within that clause.

Working in an environment where it’s cold enough for frostbite, or where ice may cause slips and falls, contractors must be aware and prepared to address the hazards before an incident occurs. 

If temperatures are low enough to cause minor hypothermia, workers should be advised to watch their own symptoms as well, Cordill said. Feeling lightheaded or having restricted motor function creates potential for accidents.

Clean air is another requirement that can’t always be assumed. At a site with chemicals, the responsibility is on the project owner and subcontractors to ensure ventilation is available, and in some cases gas detection or other sensors, as well as related PPE.

Wildlife and traffic

Some of the most memorable incidents often involve the unpredictable part of outdoor work: insects and wildlife. On job sites, Cannon & Wendt often deals with “the usual critters found in the desert, like bees, spiders, snakes and coyotes,” Schmitz said. 

Stray dogs and coyotes are not always friendly. Bees gather during the summer months. In Arizona, rattlesnakes and scorpions appear when they’re least expected.

Birds may take issue with workers suspended in the air on high-rise buildings, bridges or overpasses. It’s hard to anticipate interactions such as these, and they can cause serious risks.

Even the ground where workers walk may need to be controlled, like when machinery is in use.

“Walking paths should be clearly marked and kept in good condition, with an emphasis on eliminating tripping hazards and unequal changes in elevation,” Schmitz said. 

While site-specific safety training takes place when new employees arrive on-site, the adjusted rules are enforced by the general contractor and EC, Wappner added.

Sharing responsibility

When it comes to safety risks and responsibilities, OSHA categorizes employers into four groups:

• The controlling employer that oversees the job site may be the general contractor or owner. 
• The creating employer is the subcontractor on-site who creates a hazard.
•  The correcting employer is responsible for correcting those hazards. 
• The exposing employer might be the electrical contractor if they chose to ignore risks or hazards they had been warned about.

Consider a damaged scaffolding in which the party that caused the damage is liable if they didn’t fill out a repair request or notify the general contractor, and somebody was hurt as a result of that damage. The correcting employer is responsible for correcting those types of hazards and can be held responsible if they don’t do so in a timely manner. An exposing employer would be responsible if they were aware of the risk and chose to expose their employees to the hazard before it had been fixed.

The relatively limited number of injuries on construction sites can be attributed, in part, to the daily meetings that include safety discussions. 

If there’s a unique task being performed or a change in the game plan, safety needs to be reassessed, even if it requires additional time and expense.

“A strong commitment to workplace safety is something that separates the good employers from the bad employers,” Krueger said.

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