Electrical Safety for the Competent Person

Which Electrical Safety Course Do You Need?

eTraining sells three different electrical courses, and they are built for three different people. Here is who each one is for.

• Electrical Safety for the Competent Person. The page you are on. Eight hours, supervisor level, for the person your company designates as the electrical competent person. It goes past hazard recognition into the written programs, the testing schedule and the records. View the Electrical Safety for the Competent Person
• Electrical Safety Course. The awareness course, for crew members who work around electricity but do not supervise it. It covers recognizing hazards and staying clear of them. Buy this one for the crew and the competent person course for whoever runs the job. View the Electrical Safety Course
• NFPA 70E Electrical Safety, 2024. Built around the NFPA 70E consensus standard rather than the OSHA construction rules. Buy this where your work involves arc flash boundaries and shift-level electrical work on energized equipment. View the NFPA 70E Electrical Safety, 2024
• Electrical Safety for the Competent Person, Spanish. The same 8-hour competent person course, delivered in Spanish. Same modules, same final exam, same Certificate of Completion. View the Electrical Safety for the Competent Person, Spanish

If one person supervises the electrical work and the rest of the crew works near it, most sites buy the competent person course once and the awareness course for everyone else. Our team can price both together.

What the Electrical Competent Person Is Responsible For

The title sounds informal. The duties behind it are not, and most of them are written down somewhere a compliance officer can ask to see.

• Your site already chose one of two ground-fault options. 29 CFR 1926.404(b)(1)(i) lets an employer protect people with ground-fault circuit interrupters or with an assured equipment grounding conductor program. Pick the second one and 1926.404(b)(1)(iii)(A) says you designate a competent person to implement it. This course covers what that person does.
• The role carries three written programs, not one. The electrical safety program, the assured equipment grounding conductor program and the written lockout and tagout program all land on the same desk. Module 9 walks through what belongs in each one and who signs it.
• Competency is demonstrated, not certified. There is no federal certificate for this role. The employer designates the person, and the training record is what backs the designation up. You get a personalized Certificate of Completion to keep on file.
• Somebody has to be able to stop the work. OSHA's definition at 29 CFR 1926.32(f) pairs hazard recognition with the authority to take prompt corrective measures. Recognizing the fault is only half of it. The course spends as much time on the authority half as the technical half.

If your site runs a grounding conductor program instead of GFCIs, the designation is already yours to make. This course is the eight hours that makes it defensible.