Sub mains rooms.

[chcnorris29]

Hello,
Been doing some work today in a high rise where there are sub mains cupboards on each floor however the communal fuse boards and all main connections for flats (before meter, meter and fb in flats) has previously been relocated to 1 sub mains room off of an old unused office on the ground floor to prevent vandalism. (not the nicest area in the world to work, we where working there because they had stolen an earth conductor).

Anyway:

Was told by people I was working with that as an apprentice I legally can not be in the sub mains room.
Sound weird as how can you learn to work on the sub mains if this is the case.
is this correct?

Thanks

 

[SirKit Breaker]

Was told by people I was working with that as an apprentice I legally can not be in the sub mains room.
Sound weird as how can you learn to work on the sub mains if this is the case.
is this correct?

This is crap. There is no legalities around you being in any location. What the Electricity at Work regs say, is that you must be competent, as you are an Apprentice, i will take worst case scenario and assume that you are not, but you are in there with a skilled person and working under his/her supervision and instruction, so you are now an instructed person. look up the definition of skilled and instructed persons in BS7671 part 2, and you will see where i am coming from, and why you can be in there.

Cheers.............Howard

 

[markc123]

Can't see how or why it is a problem aslong as you're supervised by someone competent. Was never a problem when i was an apprentice, like you say - how do you learn otherwise...they always say the best experience is the experience.

However, with Health and Safety these days it wouldn't suprise me if they have made it illegal.

 

[Dizzy_Maskell]

Perfectly allowed in a sub mains it's the DNO transformer room you are not legally allowed access to

 

[telectrix]

as both above sensible replies ^^^ ^^^.

 

[Marvo]

I'm not suggesting this is the reason in your case but I had an apprentice many years ago who had some kind of attention deficit disorder. He couldn't keep his fingers off things no matter how many times he was told not to touch. I went through a stage where I wouldn't take him into certain plant rooms because I couldn't trust him to keep his fingers out of things.

Eventually I found a workaround. We had 2 large flashlights and these things were from the era before LED's so they were bulky and heavy and made of PVC, every time we went into a place that was risky it was his job to hold both of these flashlights, one in each hand and he was under strict instructions never to put them down and to point them wherever the light was needed. It all worked out well with this system, it was easy to keep an eye on where he was at all times because these things were bright and they occupied both his hands so it stopped him fiddling with things he shouldn't.

 

[chcnorris29]

Perfectly allowed in a sub mains it's the DNO transformer room you are not legally allowed access to

Are these at substations or are they located in highrise flats? is is apprentices or anyone who is not DNO that can not go there? also why?

 

[7029 dave]

Under supervision no problem.

 

[Dizzy_Maskell]

You are allowed in Sub and apprentice to probably unsupervised if all covers are on etc,
Not sure on exact DNO transformer rooms just aware unless DNO you can't go in there,
Crazy as normally people more qualified than them but don't fancy messing with HV stuff myself

 

[ChrisElectrical88]

Could be company policy, how old are you? Some forms have ott health and safety