Changes to OSH and Electricity Licensing Regulations
The Department of Commerce have proposed changes to the Occupational Safety and Health and Electricity Licensing Amendment (Live Work) Regulations 2017. The changes will mandate the de-energising of electrical installations in buildings and roof spaces as the most effective means of eliminating the hazards posed by electricity and to save lives.
The Property Council supports the strengthening of appropriate safety precautions however industry needs to be aware of how these changes will impact the business.
The two key changes are:
- Prescribe minimum safety standard when working on or near energised electrical installations. Note that this is restricted ‘on or near’ the installation and not the entire premises or building if not deemed necessary by the electrician. Primarily these changes result in the requirement to de-energise the electrical installation before any work is conducted on or near the installation. The impact to the Property Council members resulting from this change is generally expected to be minimal as it is already industry practice to follow these procedures when working at or near electrical installations.
- Introduce a new requirement that before any work is conducted within the roof space of domestic (current or converted) and small business premises (that were at one time a domestic building) that the power to the building must be switched off. Note that this applies whenever someone enters the roof space for any reason and is not limited to electrical works. The impact to Property Council members will be restricted to those that own or operate in domestic or small business premises and will require additional safety and shutdown procedures and items like temporary lighting processes to be put in place to ensure that the roof space is de-energised prior to any worker or staff members entering it.
However, the regulations will require the complete electrical shutdown of floors, or groups of floors, or complete buildings far more often than currently occurs. This will require more involvement from management in arranging the shutdown and greater inconvenience to the tenants.
In many instances, isolation of power to a floor, as required for example for fitout work, will necessitate isolation of the supply that serves several floors. This clearly can only happen after hours, except in an emergency. When a fitout has been completed, power cannot be turned on till after hours on that day. Increased planning and management will be required. A situation could also arise that require a floor to be isolated at short notice to fix a fault; this will now impact on more than the one floor.
For older computer rooms or data centres, where duplicate power distribution systems are not installed, the addition of a circuit may require the computer system to be shut down. This could have a substantial impact on the business.
Going forward the electrical design of buildings should enable an electrical shutdown to be isolated to cause minimum disruption to the business.