Daily Archives: May 4, 2010

Hospitals are covered under the OSHA/NFPA 70E requirements.  Arc flash/blast incidents can cause severe employee injury and loss of electrical power to key functions of patient care, while the cost of injury treatment may exceed $1,000,000 per case with permanent disability and probable litigation.  As one Director of hospital engineering services recently told us, “There are systems in the hospital that we just can’t shut down, and must perform our inspections on live parts.”

We recently published an article on our website in which we continue to recommend the rigorous analysis prescribed by IEEE 1584, and warn against “quickie” or generic 70E arc flash solutions. An industrial facility asked IESO to evaluate arc flash results from another firm that reportedly used a customized program for arc flash analysis.  The facility management was concerned about the lack of time the consultant spent on-site, the minimal review of electrical components and the generic results.  Our review revealed highly inaccurate information on 90% of the labels including incident energy ratings underestimated by 200-450%, clearly endangering employee safety.