The idea of being a qualified person, or a qualified electrical worker (QEW), has led to several points of contention and confusion. Often, a new employee joins the team and the only credential that speaks to their qualification is a journeyman’s card or license. However, the license can only tell us that the individual is able to perform work in the jurisdiction that issued the license. It has absolutely nothing to do with the concept of being a QEW for the purpose of NFPA 70E: Standard for Electrical Safety in the Workplace or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Since having a license doesn’t necessarily make a person a qualified electrical worker, let’s get to the bottom of what it takes to make an unqualified individual qualified. To do this, we should take it all the way back to the reason why the concept of a qualified person is so important. If all that was required was that the individual can physically complete a task, this would be a relatively easy conversation. However, working with electrical equipment and electricity adds complexity because significant hazards exist in the job. We can never bring the hazards to zero in today’s electrified workplaces without either completely removing electricity or completely re-engineering the electrical infrastructure to use a system incapable of causing injury. 

What OSHA and 70E say

OSHA and NFPA 70E say that whenever an employee will be exposed to an electrical hazard, they need to be a qualified person. Keep in mind that the purpose of these documents is to provide a workplace as free from hazards as possible. NFPA 70E describes a qualified person as “One who has demonstrated skills and knowledge related to the construction and operation of electrical equipment and installations and has received safety training to identify the hazards and reduce the associated risk.” 

Because employers are liable for injuries that result from employees exposed to an electrical hazard, it is imperative that qualified persons are used to perform any work in which the hazard is not fully removed. OSHA and NFPA 70E mandate this, and we want to make sure that those who hold the liability of the company in their hands are capable of making the right decisions. 

Training and demonstration

So, how do you get to a point where you can feel relatively certain that an employee has what it takes? The key to this is written right into the definition: training and demonstration. An interesting twist is that neither NFPA 70E nor OSHA tell us to what extent this must be done. Both documents spell out the topics that must be trained, such as the proper selection and use of test instruments, hazard identification and PPE selection and use, just to name a few. However, does the training need to be an hour? Eight hours? A week? We get entirely zero guidance on this, and while we wish there were some sort of checklist to help us, it simply doesn’t exist. So, how do we know when an employee crosses the finish line?

The answer here is a single four-letter word: risk. The determining factor in the extent of training and demonstration an employee must complete is determined by what level of risk their job entails. Risk is defined in NFPA 70E as the combination of two things: the likelihood and severity of injury or damage to health. These two items will drive what it takes to understand when an employee can be considered qualified.
Employees who are only exposed to a moderate amount of electrical risk, such as laborers and office personnel, do not need the same extent of electrical safety training that would be required for technicians making service calls to existing facilities for repair and maintenance. The latter is typically exposed to a higher likelihood of injury and potentially more severe injury should an incident occur.

It’s on the employer

Since NFPA and OSHA do not provide the magic “easy button” that determines the extent of training and demonstration needed, the employer is left to draft the program on their own. This is somewhat of a blessing in disguise because it allows employers to determine what works best for them, and when the lives of employees and the financial future of the company are at stake, this is really something that the employer should be doing anyway. 

One approach that has been used to create this qualified electrical worker program is setting up a graduated or tiered level task-based system. Starting with the least exposed employees or those just starting out, training and demonstration are minimal. Often this level is based more on awareness of electrical hazards than anything else, but a more senior electrically qualified individual will be needed to mitigate any hazard present. 

Next is a level qualified for tasks that present a slightly higher risk. Examples here might be to operate a switch or a circuit breaker in a normal operating condition. Such tasks have a very low likelihood of occurrence, but not a lack of one. They need to understand what hazards are present and what practices they must use to mitigate or lessen the effects of these hazards should an incident occur. Their training typically adds to the awareness training level of understanding their limitations. For instance, if they were to operate a circuit breaker during a lockout procedure and they determined that there was some indication of potential failure of the equipment during this operation, they would need to enlist the help of a higher-level qualified person to perform this task using more in-depth work practices to do it safely.

Becoming a QEW

The next jump in qualification is typically the biggest, to a QEW, or what we have traditionally called an electrically qualified person. This level is someone that an employer would need to perform work within the restricted approach boundary, any work that presents an increased likelihood of injury to an employee and carries a severity of injury that necessitates hazard mitigation. 

These individuals are trained in and demonstrate their ability to assess risk and perform job planning duties. They also know the equipment they will be working with, or at a minimum, they understand how to identify where and what hazards exist. Most important, these individuals understand how to mitigate the possibility of injury during their job duties. This is where we strive to get anyone who will be in a service van or plant electrical maintenance technicians. They can troubleshoot, take measurements, commission equipment and connect new equipment into the existing infrastructure.

However, even the QEW level might contains degrees. For example, a contractor servicing medium- or high-voltage distribution systems will most likely have a subset of its QEW program that they have put their trust in to work with systems at higher voltage levels than the common utilization voltage levels. These individuals go through additional training and skills demonstrations to prove to their employer that they possess the skills to work safely around these systems with elevated hazards.

After all, that is what it comes down to when we are looking to “qualify” an employee. First, we need to train them according to what we need them qualified for, and then we need employees to show us that they can handle what is being asked of them and do so safely. 

Consider: “One who has demonstrated skills and knowledge related to the construction and operation of electrical equipment and installations and has received safety training to identify the hazards and reduce the associated risk.” If we use these 32 words as the guiding principle to determine who will do electrical work that presents a hazard, we have taken the necessary steps to ensure that if our workplace is not hazard-free, our employees will ensure that the risk is reduced as much as possible. That is a state of safety that we will all be able to live with.