NFPA 70E or the General Electrical Safety Course?
These two get compared more than any other pair in the catalogue, and the honest difference is not depth for its own sake. It is what the worker is exposed to.
- NFPA 70E Electrical Safety. NFPA 70E is the consensus standard for working on or near energized equipment, and it assumes the worker will be close to live parts. Arc flash boundaries, PPE tables, energized work permits, and the risk assessment behind all of it. View the NFPA 70E Electrical Safety (this page)
- Electrical Safety Course. The general Electrical Safety Course is awareness for workers who are around electrical systems rather than in them. It is the right level for most of a site's headcount and it does not pretend to be the 70E course. View the Electrical Safety Course
- Electrical Safety for the Competent Person. Electrical Safety for the Competent Person is the program-level course, for whoever is accountable for how the other two get used. View the Electrical Safety for the Competent Person
If someone on your crew is going inside a live panel, they need the 70E course. If they walk past it, they need the general one. Most sites buy both, for different lists of people.
What a Qualified Electrical Person Has to Do
29 CFR 1910.332(b)(3) sets a floor for anyone treated as a qualified person, and it is shorter and more specific than most people expect: three things, named in the text.
- Tell exposed live parts from everything else. 29 CFR 1910.332(b)(3) requires a qualified person to be trained to distinguish exposed live parts from other parts of electric equipment. It sounds obvious until somebody opens a panel they have not seen before.
- Know the voltage in front of them. The same paragraph requires them to determine the nominal voltage of exposed live parts, which is what every downstream decision about boundaries and protective equipment depends on.
- Know how close they are allowed to get. And to know the clearance distances specified in 29 CFR 1910.333(c), and the voltages to which they will be exposed. Three requirements, one paragraph.
- And the depth is set by the risk, not by the job title. 29 CFR 1910.332(c) then says the degree of training is determined by the risk to the employee, which is why a worker who occasionally opens a live panel is not trained to the same depth as one who does it daily.
This course is built for the people that paragraph is describing. If your crew is not in it, the general Electrical Safety Course is the better buy.
A lot of information
Sometimes I feel that testing it was tricky, but after doble check my errors I realized the correct answers… In summary I liked the training