Working Alone

[australiantroubleman]

Our company is renegotiating the "lone work agreement", this is a mutually agreed statement on what equipment / situations that can be attended alone or require assistance.

Some examples, we can only climb alone to 600mm from any live bare secondary , require 1kv gloves to be worn for all live secondary work even on the ground.

We can switch and earth/ground all overhead equipment alone from ground level via sticks or handles up to and including transmission stations.

We cannot switch underground equipment alone including elbows or dedicated switchgear.

We cannot rack circuit breakers into or out of busbars or ground/earth or try back after fault alone .

We do not work nightshift 10pm till 600am alone (but can work back on overtime alone if required).

We have the right to request assistance for any work without argument from despatchers / control room operators if we dont feel safe or happy with the situation.

These are just a few examples .

I would like to get a general idea of what is regarded as normal practice for lone work in other companies .

[loodvig]

Our company is renegotiating the "lone work agreement", this is a mutually agreed statement on what equipment / situations that can be attended alone or require assistance.

Some examples, we can only climb alone to 600mm from any live bare secondary , require 1kv gloves to be worn for all live secondary work even on the ground.

We can switch and earth/ground all overhead equipment alone from ground level via sticks or handles up to and including transmission stations.

We cannot switch underground equipment alone including elbows or dedicated switchgear.

We cannot rack circuit breakers into or out of busbars or ground/earth or try back after fault alone .

We do not work nightshift 10pm till 600am alone (but can work back on overtime alone if required).

We have the right to request assistance for any work without argument from despatchers / control room operators if we dont feel safe or happy with the situation.

These are just a few examples .

I would like to get a general idea of what is regarded as normal practice for lone work in other companies .

First off I have no clue how far 600mm is! Sorry! I still use inches and feet.
We do not test and ground alone.
All our trouble shifts are one man and we team up if help is needed.
I'm not sure as far as climbing alone so I won't comment on it.
Not to hijack your post but I'm interested in just how many compnays use 1kv or class 'O' gloves.

[australiantroubleman]

We used to use inches down here but now its all metric, anyway 600mm is about 27 inches .

1 kv gloves are just your standard rubber gloves issued for all secondary work here , we wear leather gloves over the top of them , i will have to check what class they are no doubt its a different rating method to what is used in the US

[LINETRASH]

We supposidly can climb and work secondary alone, but none of us do.

It's common to operate switch gear alone. I will not climb a pole alone to operate switches some idiot had installed in the rear of.

Racking out metal clad breakers alone is a common practice.

I worked many underground sections, operating elbows, switchgear and testing cable.

We work a rotating shift arond the clock, with shift diffriential pay.

Our dispatchers give us no shit.

[LeadHead]

At my company we work all 600v and below with class O gloves alone anything above 600v requires a second man unless someones life was in danger

We switch up to 69 alone and ground up to 12kv alone

Underground we will switch and test cable alone only on single phase.
No racking in or out of breakers is done by troublemen.

We work our middle shift 2-12 with another troubleman the rest are solo
if we need help we get it usually without any questions.they leave it up to us to make those desicions

Last we do not climb anything alone unless someones life is in danger.

[duckhunter]

We have one on-call lineman take a 1-man bucket home. He responds to 911 calls directly. During the Spring, Summer, Fall the person with the trcuk responds to individual outages. If he can lift the hot tap with a shotgun, he re-works the can. He can check connections at the lift pole or weatherhead. If it is an outage where lightning blew a fuse on a tap, he can re-fuse the tap. Basically anything else requires another qualified employee.

[glovenlove13kva]

We work secondary alone and some primary alone. Also in daytime we can climb poles alone, need a second person at night. We can also call for a second person if need be.There is a lot that we can do alone.

[Special ED]

Why would you do anything alone with out a qualified person on the ground watching?? Seems silly and dangerous to me.

When I was a 2 man crew and I had a job in primary or in the rear I would call and ask for another crew. Sometimes they would complain cause of labor shortages. But I refused to work primary or climb a pole with out someone there who was capable of getting me down. Got alot of crap over it but I told them they needed to give me a lineman and put my first year ape on a construction crew. Occasionally they would send a supervisor out to supervise in place of a qualified person and they wouldn't even have no hooks. Needless to say those jobs were turned back in.

[Bull Dog]

Finally some one with some sense. If you call for help enough they get the idea that its not cost effective. We had that at my company and they got rid of it. Only thing we do alone is use a extendo or mabey change a conn at the house.

[Special ED]

Our trouble men can do anything alone as long as they maintain a 2 foot clearance on primary. But when it comes to climbing they wont. They call dispatch and get some help. But when the men do work alone they check in on a regular basis. And with the PSC down LG&Es throats they don't let someone work too long alone without sending help to clear an outage.