Electricity Today T&D Magazine

Line-construction contractors can do their best to train the management, offer safety training and equipment and trust the foremen who are appointed to a job, but it is an inherently dangerous business. Despite all the safeguards, some new linemen say this is what some foremen tell them about safety procedures: “That’s the way you may have learned it in training, but this is how it’s done on the job ...”
Training is designed to keep linemen safe. But is that training and equipment being put to proper use? The answer varies depending on the job and the foreman—more so than...

How Ontario regulation can improve electrical safety

BY BILL KHASHFE, London Hydro

According to an Ontario Electrical Safety Report, 35 percent of the province’s electrical-related fatalities in the past 10 years were attributed to power-line contact. Equipment specifications and electric utility construction plans within Ontario’s power industry, only a few decades ago, lacked regulation. Each utility developed its own policies.

Currently, the global economy has created a marketplace in which equipment is manufactured to various standards and, occasionally, with no standards at all. As a result, governments have started to step in to regulate the safety of equipment used...