REPORT IT! Electric Shock (VIDEO 2)
In this second video of our Switch On: Report It! series, workers from Electrix share their story about an
incident where a worker suffered an electric shock that could have been much worse, and could have easily
caused him serious harm.
View through the Transpower Website (downloadable):
https://www.transpower.co.nz/safety/safety-transpower/switch-report-it
View through Youtube (streaming only):
https://youtu.be/RHRsg7lWjNo
Why report it?
Near miss and hazard reports are important indicators for things that could injure or seriously harm our
people if they aren’t addressed. If something happens to you, it could happen to someone else – so you
need to report it in order to improve safety for everyone.
The purpose of the ’Report it’ video campaign is to encourage us all to:
 recognise and report near misses and hazards; and
 take personal accountability for doing this – even if it means standing up to our mates or a supervisor to
do so, and even if it means admitting something that almost went wrong, even if no one else saw it.
Did you know?
Electric shock is the one of the biggest risks to our workers – not surprising, given the industry we work in.
Our workers had 57 electric shock-related incidents over the last year, ranging from identification of an
exposed live wire (near miss) to an induced electric shock. Here are some examples from Transpower’s
2015-16 incident register:
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A line crew that was about to start vegetation work discovered that the scheduled outage was on the
incorrect circuit and stopped work - a permit had been issued for the wrong circuit (Near Miss);
A worker received an electric shock when he bridged a disconnector that was in an open state. Earth
continuity was compromised by the open state of the disconnector, and made worse through use of a
set of earths located outside the station earth grid – meaning he was working outside an ‘equipotential’
zone (Non-treatment Injury);
A maintainer was checking an 11 kV VT fault when he noticed VT units were not perfectly aligned. He
then made a small adjustment with a normally gloved hand to fix this – trusting his own experience and
intuition rather than following the correct (safe) procedure (Near Miss)
What can we do to be safer?
How many of us have had similar experiences? What can we do to reduce the risk or impact?
Here are some ‘critical controls’ for electric shock – which of these could help reduce risk or potential impact
in the situations you’ve just seen and heard about? What are some other examples of things we can do?
Control
Examples
Site and/or tower access
controls
Security maintained – gates & access to work sites, onsite
security, physical barriers
Automated protection systems
Interlocks, earth wires, surge arrestors, circuit breakers
Signage / warning signs
Appropriate signs are present, clear, accurate
Competent workers
Correct training & certification for assigned work/duties
Planning
Job pack has details of plan. Where there’s a change a change
plan is submitted and approved
Adherence to procedures,
guidelines etc.
Keys to life Basic Rule - live until proven dead, test before touch.
Earthing/bonding, isolation processes, equipotential zones
Hazard identification and
awareness (JSA’s etc.)
Tailgates, toolbox meetings, JSA’s, risk slider and hazard id &
management plans
Effective supervision
Site, job and personnel management, close supervision
Fatigue management/fitness to
work
Awareness of how many/few rest days worked by crew members,
workers’ home situations
Communication
RTU visual, external communication, appropriate and in place
Emergency response, escape
and rescue plans
Emergency response plans shared with crew before work starts
and recorded in the job pack
Incident management / First aid
Appropriate first aid kits available & carried, trained first aiders
PPE Gear / harnesses & lanyards
Outer clothing Arc rated & worn. Specialist protective gear in use
We suggest you ask your teams about the steps they need to take to when they have a near miss:
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What are your team’s rules… what’s the first thing you do? Who do you tell?
Is there someone you need to ask to help you report it, or is this something you do yourself? If so, how?
And how do you know you’ve done what you need to?
Is there anything that would stop you reporting – would you be worried about how your supervisor
would react, or your crew? Is the form or system difficult to use?
Letting us know
Each company has its own internal process for reporting near miss incidents, but if an incident happens
while working on a Transpower job you need to let us know too.
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Our large Service Providers use a system called Maximo to share this information with us, and have
people trained in the system who enter incident information
Our smaller Service Providers, who don’t use Maximo, use the Safety Event Form on our website here:
https://www.transpower.co.nz/safety-event