Case Study on Safety– What can go wrong while noting Breaker nameplate details

Apologies for writing lengthy case studies. We wish you will give your valuable 10 minutes to read this case study about Human Safety

Background :

Safety (Humans & Equipment’s) has been one of the major concerns in all the industries. Safe practices in Industries keep the people working in it safe. And various industries in India and across the world are taking various steps to improvise Human & Equipment safety in their plants. One common step which everyone knows is Safety helmet. However, there are many industries in India, Having good safety budget. As soon as any person enters into plant, they are provided with the PPE’s from gate itself whether it is Visitor or Vendor or Employees.

Normally PPEs consist of Safety Helmet, Safety Shoes, Highlighter Jacket, Safety Googles and Earplug. While for doing different kinds of job different PPE is recommended, which I will not elaborate, else 2 pages will be filled with that only.

Today, we are going to tell you about one such incident, which happened in one Process plant 4-5 years back with an engineer having 2-3 years of experience in plant, having very good technical skills and very much interested in learning more technical stuff related to his field of engineering.

Incident Details:

           During shutdown, various kind of activities are held, and the engineer, which we are taking about was also given some activities inside substation, to look after complete 6.6 kV HT panel activities through their own inhouse team. HT panel maintenance activities were completed as per planning. We are not going to talk about What PPEs they used during the plant maintenance. After completion of maintenance, Engineer was taking details from HT Panel might be Breaker name plate, operation and some other details. The panel had 30 verticals.

Normally it is a tendency of every engineers / technician whenever they enter the substation, they remove the safety helmet as a sigh of relief, as if some burden from head is removed. This is the very common practice you will see in plants (Now this practice is also improving). This tendency of removing helmet becomes common in substation also, because in many plants we have seen the sitting place / office of field Engineers & technicians are inside that substation room only. So as soon as engineers enter to his office, he / she removes the helmet.

So, that engineer also did the same, he came to his substation for noting down something from HT panels and after entering he removed the helmet and kept on his table, took notebook and pen to note-down details.

Pictorial representation of HT Panels

After noting down details of around 15-16 panels, he went to next panel. He opened relay control panel (upper half of Panel), noted down something, closed and sit on his knees to note down details from breakers. While closing the control panel (upper side), he didn’t properly hook the closing knob and sat down. Now, due to unproper closing of panel door, that control panel door got opened. And at that time only he, got up and his head banged in the panel door.

Pictorial representation of HT Panels with control door open

 Pictorial representation of HT Panels with control door open and Engineer without helmet

           His head was severely injured, with lots of bloods, and he slowly felt unconscious. He was rushed to the hospitals in Township by the colleagues and after 3-4 hours he was rushed immediately to a Big hospital in ambulance of plant, which was around 200 kms from plant in a big city. Plant people and doctors over there all bit which they can do. He had lost lots of blood, was unconscious for around 14-15 days. He was the only son of his parents. You can imagine the trauma that parent had got in those 14-15 days.

           After he got conscious, he was again examined and there was a severe blood clot in the brain which was needed to be operated. Doctors asked him and parents that he should forget about going to job at least before 1 year. Parents kept him there for 2 more weeks after the condition was stable, they took them to their home. Before operation there was medication of around 7-8 months. After successful operation, it took time of around 1-1.5 years for him to recover fully. Good news is that, he is fine and in good health today. He decided to leave that job and start afresh. He is now working in a reputed Bank, leaving his technical skills aside, which he loved doing.

           He was lucky to start fresh, but you know many are not. Every day, somewhere, we keep on hearing unwanted incident / accidents keep on happening in plant, which we all feel must be reduced.

Conclusion that can be drawn from this Incident:

           If he had wear Safety helmet at that time of work as simple as noting down details from panels, even in Substation, his life could have been different.

           The common notion about SAFETY HELMET is that it will protect your head if anything is falling on your head from above. But what if your head is falling into something. Also, the common argument of people is that “is terrace going to fall on us inside substation? ” In this case it has.

It’s not necessary that we should learn from our mistakes only, we must also learn from other mistakes and we can improvise and that is the reason we are Human being, because we can improvise. After all human life is of prime importance, its above all the things.

Precautions to be taken :

So, whenever you are doing any work even if it is in the safest environment wear the required protective PPEs. In this case if he had worn that safety helmet while noting Just details, those years of his were not wasted and the trauma and pain he himself, his complete family and his friends went through could have been avoided.

           We wish next time you go near panel even for noting details, you will wear your protective equipment’s.

I tried my best to use good pictorial representation but i had limited resources for this case study.

Any other suggestions, if you have, are welcomed.

Regards

Avinash Singh

[email protected]