A Bit different

[keefysher]

I too have seen this video and while it's very informative from a practical point of view, it cannot replace a formal qualification which is where any professional business needs to go. And with all courses involving Electricity above Low Voltage Bands there will be at least 5 days of Health Safety and First Aid training tailored to the relative industry, all of which has served me well and helped to keep me alive and kicking (just ) all these Years!

Only 5 days???

My basic underground training was 20 days, followed by 2 years close personal supervision before being permitted to work on my own. That is an intrinsically safe environment where having a KitKat on your person could lead to immediate imprisonment if found on search. 20 years later under the idiocy of elf n safe tea after 3 hours in a classroom I got a ticket to allow me to go play on high speed electrified railways where trains run at 120mph and 25KV OHLE or 850V dc, the ticket proved I was qualified to go out on live lines, something I'd never done in my life, but I had the ticket. That provides the audit trail for prosecution, does not keep people safe as evidenced recently, sadly.

 

[keefysher]

Best elf n safe tea training I've ever had, and pass on is 'don't put your head / finger where you wouldn't put your d1ck', served me well for my lifetime. In these PC days it gets me a warning of being diversity unaware, or other such stupidity

Last week a train operating company was fined for a 'railway' enthusiast sticking his head out of a moving train window, despite the signage and the knowledge of the enthusiast, in concert with rare sense that any sane person would not do such a thing. Head hit a signal gantry, not another train. Apparently there were too many signs on the window in addition to the 'Do Not Lean Out', there was 'no smoking', 'no mobile phones', 'quiet zone', give up seat for disabled person' and a host of others where elf n safe tea has taken away the ability of people to think. Madness. Where there is a claim, there must be a blame.

 

[Blobcat]

Best elf n safe tea training I've ever had, and pass on is 'don't put your head / finger where you wouldn't put your d1ck', served me well for my lifetime. In these PC days it gets me a warning of being diversity unaware, or other such stupidity

Last week a train operating company was fined for a 'railway' enthusiast sticking his head out of a moving train window, despite the signage and the knowledge of the enthusiast, in concert with rare sense that any sane person would not do such a thing. Head hit a signal gantry, not another train. Apparently there were too many signs on the window in addition to the 'Do Not Lean Out', there was 'no smoking', 'no mobile phones', 'quiet zone', give up seat for disabled person' and a host of others where elf n safe tea has taken away the ability of people to think. Madness. Where there is a claim, there must be a blame.

Similar on the roads, way way way too many signs. Get rid of all of them and drivers would then have to look where they’re going... I’m a very firm believer in “Personal Responsibility”. Which isn’t very popular these days as you can’t sue anyone and lawyers don’t make any money from it...

 

[ajlsl600]

once told by HS local jobsworth in burkina zinc mine i could not continue to wear shorts on site ! told her to leave quickly and that shorts had been worn since the time she in her daddies bb and to get mine manager to give me instruction.never heard any more, but off her xmas card list after. could take 6 hrs to do a dump truck puncture . HS inspect machine/risk assessment/ machine safety taped /puncture man found !/briefed /signed paperwork/wheel changed/paperwork returned same job on sat or sun less than hr HS dont work weekends !!!!!!

 

[keefysher]

For balance, it's not just elf n safe tea personages that have no clue. Hand Relief (HR [w4nkers] as a certain member on here taught me recently) are another group who have no idea of the real world beyond a document on a screen.

During my time in an O&G environment, a senior tech had been left on an offshore rig (well a single leg with no deck as it turned out) for 27 hours with no food, water or hygiene facilities. The builders of the rigs in that field have an on site mortuary in their main shipyards due to the death toll of workers, but not in their car plants . Bit difficult to swim back to shore in that area, so no choice but to wait for a boat to collect him. On return to UK he was hauled up by HR to be disciplined for filling his timesheet in with too long a working day with no rest breaks. I kid you not.

Not that he was unlucky, but on another project he and a colleague were taken hostage. The colleague was injured. There is a protocol in such events that includes the use of armed helicopters and associated 'independent safety consultants' to undertake an extraction employing lethal force if required. Authorisation was given to launch, with the HR Director assigned to 'manage' the situation. She chose not to answer her phone, e-mails during the rescue operation as she was taking her kids to the theatre matinee. Fortunately the guys were released without a shot being fired. She later refused to attend the debriefing. She wasn't there much longer.

An awful lot of business was won in that region due to capability to deal with reality that less risk aware organisations couldn't comprehend. The team grew 8x to deliver very profitable work with no repeat incidents and enhanced safety performance in the region. At one point the fatality rate was 1.5 per month per rig before we arrived and applied practical methodologies. It aint difficult if you have the experience in the field.

Not great to answer a call showing 'sat phone x' on your in car screen as you drive to work, to answer and a clear 'man overboard' opening statement before confirmation its not your colleagues. Sat phones were introduced in order to ensure communications, despite some clients not wanting them used. No sat phone, no attendance. There is also humour in the first time a sat phone was issued for a job that involved transit through a civil war zone and the pre planned check in call wasn't on time as the tech was trying to call from inside his hotel room, stepping outside, the call connected!!

 

[Tony Dyson]

That's exactly what the videos are showing you.
If after that you need "formal qualifications" then that's the path to take.
You need to stimulate interest and curiosity otherwise there would never be any development, neither technological nor personal.

Well I understand what you're saying and cannot disagree, the only danger is the empowering of some who don't fully comprehend the dangers of working with electricity, that's why I will always recommend the safety and theory training first and foremost.

 

[Tony Dyson]

Well as I’m not in the business of comparing dicks, I’ll be ignoring all the off-topic comments and advise those who don’t agree with anything I post to either remain civil and respectful in your responses or just scroll past, I really don’t mind which you choose, but for clarification purposes I will say the following;

50v AC or DC is sufficient pressure to push 35mA around a Human Body. The fault path travelling through the chest cavity would be the worst case scenario, (and the most frequent path for an electric shock) due to the essential organs of the Heart and Lungs being in that path, 35mA is a threshold at which the Human Body will react in one of two different ways to an electric shock and the value of that current fault will be determined by the voltage applied and the internal resistance of the path of the fault current flow.

<35mA will cause Ventricular Fibrillation and Muscular Expansion, this is a Heart Attack and where people speak of being ‘thrown’ by an electric shock, you expand, your arms, legs and chest extend and if you’re unlucky enough to be on a step ladder you’ll jump off, all involuntary.

35mA and above will also cause Ventricular Fibrillation but will have the opposite effect and cause Muscular Contraction, you will involuntarily adopt the Foetal position and the really dangerous part of this is that you will not extend away from the source of the shock, you will potentially embrace it and if there’s no-one there to assist, there is a serious and tangible risk of death.

This is why the standard value of an RCD is set at 30mA

And all of this from memory during my 5 days H&S and First Aid training in 1970, not the Internet or a Computer Screen.

In my lifetime to Date, I have had the unfortunate experience of repatriating a dead colleague from Qatar to the UK who tragically electrocuted himself while working on live switchgear, I’ve driven another colleague, a HT Linesman to hospital who suffered 1st degree burns to his face, torso, arms and legs from an 11kV flashover while working at high level where the line was accidentally re-energised. I’ve also potentially on two occasions saved two lives by isolating supplies and pulling men from live switchgear, all in situations where the victims didn’t follow correct safety protocols.

So I wouldn’t knock all the H&S training offered to you, some of it is worth listening to.

I would also like to share the details of a discussion, a colleague had with the Head of H&S at Padiham Power Station for the then CEGB in ‘74 during a coal to fuel oil boiler conversion, we were walking back on to site with our safety helmets under our arms after a break one day and the Safety Officer walking towards us with a team of suited colleagues took a B line to a man at the front and almost shouted, so everyone could hear, ‘Have you ever seen anyone with a welding rod stuck in his head lad?’ after stopping and scratching his chin Kevin replied No! But if I see him I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.

 

[Tony Dyson]

Affordable Electric Vehicle eLearning Courses hosted by the IMI

Far better to get it from the horse’s mouth and counting towards an industry recognised qualification than a random have-a-go YT poster.

https://www.theimi.org.uk/landing/ev/

 

[peterws1957]

Similar on the roads, way way way too many signs. Get rid of all of them and drivers would then have to look where they’re going... I’m a very firm believer in “Personal Responsibility”. Which isn’t very popular these days as you can’t sue anyone and lawyers don’t make any money from it...

"Personal Responsibility" - whatever will they think of next?

 

[ajlsl600]

on a mine site where i was in a team building a tailings dam , we could not go to repair a puncture on a machine without H&E doing a risk assessment report and briefing the tyre fitter. red flagging the ignition and safety taping around the machine , complete B/S. often had machine out of production for more half a day , locals loved any chance to do nothing much .

 

[peterws1957]

Health and Safety, risk assessments et al have got a bad press, but there was a great need for it for personal employee safety in factories and commercial premises in the North even well into the 80's. I used to visit factories which were quite frankly death traps and well remember warning an insurance company about one commercial enterprise which should have been closed down. Warning got ignored and only a short time after an employee was killed.
H and S now seems to be employed because of our ludicrous legal system where as Blobcat says personal responsibility is a thing of the past. I suspect virtually any car meeting could be banned if risk assessments were carried out. It surprises me that the I of M racing still continues.
I can't see the clocks being turned back any time soon.

 

[Tony Dyson]

Hello @alexanderfoti I hope now that's the end of the H&S digression debate and you can continue with your thread with any developments on your project? Have you had many EV's in your workshop?

 

[alexanderfoti]

We currently have 3 Vectrix VX-1 electric motorbikes in. There are only approx 40 in the UK so that is quite a bit!

One is getting a nissan leaf lithium conversion, one just a service and tyres, and one a broken fuse is being upgraded.



I have my Fazer 600 conversion in the background as well, must get back to that.