By Michael Hyland and Jim Tomaseski
Steadily refined over nearly 100 years, the National Electrical Safety Code (NESC) is a fundamental element in the culture of safety that has gathered across electric power utilities. The work to enhance and update the Code continues today, and the success of the effort is quantifiable.
How has the NESC been adapted to address new challenges and technology innovations, and how is the Code continuing to evolve? And, most importantly, how is the NESC brought to bear in the field to drive the concrete enhancements in work procedures that deliver better protection for both utility workers and the public?
Understanding the Code’s Roots and Scope
Every minute of every day, utility professionals in the United States and around the world are working on equipment and facilities in an energized state. There is no other option, as uninterrupted electrical power is simply a requirement of public safety and global commerce in today’s world.
The truth is, in fact, that energized work is nothing new. It has been going on ever since Thomas Edison invented the light bulb in 1879. It is a reflection of this fact that, in 1913, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS) received a congressional mandate to study the hazards of electrical work. The goal was to drive consistency and safety across the design, construction, operation and use of electric supply and communication installations throughout the United States. Leveraging contemporary engineering theory and generally accepted good industry practice, the first edition of the NESC was introduced one year later.
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Published exclusively by IEEE since 1972, the NESC (www.standards.ieee.org/nesc) establishes ground rules for the practical safeguarding of persons during the installation, operation and maintenance of electric supply stations and equipment and both overhead and underground electric supply and communication lines. Utilities, their employees, contractors and manufacturers can look to the Code for best practices associated with work on any elements on the utility side of the service point. A separate set of rules–the National Electrical Code (NEC)–addresses premises wiring, utilization equipment and other elements on the user side of the service point.
In most cases, the service point can be easily identified by the presence of a meter. There are situations, however, where demarcation is less clear. These might include installations of area lighting for a retail parking lot or residential backyard, instances where a connection comes off a distribution line or occasions where the entry point for power is on the load side of the meter or inside a rooftop weather head or locked vault.
Shapers of the NESC and NEC are working together to strive for seamless co-existence of the two codes. In addition, utilities can look to contracts, other authorized agreements or local regulations in order to clarify the relationship among the NESC, NEC and other codes.
Remaining Realistic, Practical and Useful
To ensure that the Code stays current with innovations in power, telephone, cable TV and railroad signal systems, the NESC is constantly being refined.
There is an effective, five-year process in place to keep the Code realistic, practical and useful even in the face of new developments and challenges in the industry landscape. For example, the current, 2007 edition of the Code introduced important improvements in the areas of grounding, sag calculations, guy and span wire insulators, load and strength factors, transportation of flammable materials, phase-to-phase cover-up, minimum-approach distance tables and clothing requirements based on arc hazard analysis.
The next, complete NESC will be a 2012 edition. Currently, seven NESC subcommittees are evaluating change proposals for this next edition of the Code. Technical subcommittees address grounding methods, electric supply stations, overhead-line clearance, overhead-line strength and loading, underground lines and work rules. And the seventh subcommittee is working to foster coordination among the other six subcommittees, as well as dealing with the scope and use of the NESC as a whole.
Proposals have been submitted, and the technical subcommittees have completed their initial review. The proposals and the subcommittee actions on each proposal will be published in the NESC Preprint, scheduled for September 1, 2009. This kicks off a window for public review by the NESC committees and other interested parties until May 1, 2010, in advance of publication of a proposed revision of the Code in January 2011. After the NESC Main Committee provides its final approval of the revisions, the Code will then go, in May 2011, to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) for recognition as an ANSI standard. Publication of the finalized, 2012 edition of the NESC will occur on Aug. 1, 2011.
Informing Regulations Around the World
Both governmental regulators and individual utilities leverage the NESC, a voluntary industry-consensus standard, in driving safety enhancements across the electrical community.
For example, when the U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) reviews a hierarchy of related source documents in writing regulations for the electrical industry, it is the NESC that is at the top of that hierarchy. Consequently, the Code sometimes leads and often informs OSHA rules.
Also, the public service or utility commissions and other governmental entities that govern utilities in more than 100 countries and, now, 49 U.S. states require adherence to the Code at least in part. Hawaii recently became that 49th U.S. state to leverage the NESC in its utility regulations. The processes of adoption vary state to state: Legislatures sanction particular editions or parts of the Code in some; NESC compliance is required without limits by edition, section or time frame in others. The NESC Committee is investigating how to better educate local jurisdictions on what the Code covers and where it applies.
Enhancing Safety in the Field
While not a design specification or instruction manual itself, the NESC finds its way into the field in a variety of ways. The Code is a widely leveraged safety authority supporting a culture of safety that has gradually enveloped the electrical community.
The NESC is often at the heart of holistic safety programs that most contemporary utilities rely on today:
- Utilities typically require their workers to carry safety manuals in the glove compartments or even on the front seats of their trucks.
- “Tailboard discussions”–in which utility workers discuss upcoming jobs, brainstorm on possible hazards and share best practices with their colleagues–have grown to be commonplace across the industry.
- All-hands safety meetings are called every month or week at many utilities, to review new challenges recently encountered in the field.
- Spot checks by utility or OSHA personnel make sure that best practices and regulations are actually followed.
- Three- to five-year apprentice programs help ensure that safety is at the heart of all line workers, meter technicians and other various utility workers before they reach the field on their own.
Ultimately, it has been the commitment of these individual utility workers to use the safety tools at their disposal that has enabled the NESC to make a positive impact on the safety of electrical workers and users alike.
Sorting Incident Myths and Reality
Even with the most advanced tools, training and procedures ever available, electrical work can still prove hazardous and accidents do still occur. But an examination of utility industry statistics collected by the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) shows just how far we as an industry have come: 765 million hours worked and 19 deaths related to activities addressed in the NESC in 2007 among responding, investor-owned utilities.
Given the relatively low number of injuries against the fantastic amount of work performed, we can see that the NESC is successfully working within its scope to outline the basic provisions necessary to enhance the safety of utility employees and the public under specified conditions. Thanks to the cooperation of regulatory bodies, utilities and workers across more and more of the United States and world, the Code is fulfilling its mission.
Of course, even one injury is unacceptable. And that is why the determination to refine an increasingly powerful NESC–95 years after its inception–has never been stronger.
About the Authors:
Michael Hyland, PE, is chair of IEEE NESC and vice president of engineering services with the American Public Power Association (APPA), the service organization for the nation’s more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities that serve more than 45 million Americans. Jim Tomaseski is vice chair of IEEE NESC and director, safety and health department, with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), which represents approximately 750,000 members who work in a wide variety of fields including utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing, railroads and government.
