The electrotechnology industry faces many unseen, or simply ignored, potentially catastrophic risks every day. Peter Vandenheuvel explores how not to overlook the common concerns.

Recent publicity surrounding a Telco network outage problem, and the possibly unexpected life-threatening consequences arising from it, got me thinking.

Because of the often-overlooked risks we face in our electrotechnology businesses, which we are likely to forget about, until it’s too late. Yet, there are risks with the potential to hugely impact all Electrical Connection’s readers’ businesses every day.

And these risks were already bad enough, but have multiplied even more since the ever-growing solar and EV installs. It was already difficult enough with small rooftop systems when they first came on the scene. But now even more when we have installations with multiple power inputs, more complex earthing and ever-increasing battery sizes.

You may not see it as a problem, but believe me, if and when it happens, you’ll wish you had.

Well, there is a way of not just preventing you from having to deal with the very costly and seriously time-consuming consequence of having to go into ‘patch up’ mode to make good the damage and repair your company’s image, but to strengthen your business at the same time.

Because by doing it right, you’ll also add to your professional image, become more profitable and save all that money which would have gone into fixing problems and paying lawyers.

How we got here?

While the issue that impacted the telecommunications company, sparking the idea for this article, may be unrelated to an electrician’s business, it’s more closely related than what may be obvious at first.

There’s a common underlying issue in both industries. Every day, sparkies face potentially unexpected risks. And many of these result from what any of you might normally consider predictable activities, which, for one reason or another, are accidentally overlooked with a totally unpredictable but extremely serious consequence.

And when you think about it in that way, almost everything you and your people do every day could result in a catastrophic flow-on effect if not properly managed. And that flow-on could be by way of electrocution, fire, accidental power outage or just plainly from someone having an accident.

Also, as our industry, like other similar trades, relies on people, human error can be one of the predominant factors.

Now you might well say: “But my people are all experts and great at what they do.” That could very well be, but until you can find me a person anywhere that now or then doesn’t have an off day, a brain freeze, drops a tool or other distraction, I will hold to my belief that all of us can make a human error.

Certainly, just getting on with the work and relying on your people “doing the right thing” isn’t enough today by a long shot.

Why now?

Because we should learn from others where possible. After all, it’s far cheaper and easier than learning from our own mistakes.

But not just that, as the years have gone by, we as a society have become an ever-increasing blame others culture where no one wants to take responsibility when things go wrong, with everyone looking increasingly for someone else to blame.

And this blame others response is made even worse as claim costs are spiralling and have a double whammy because the cost of defending one is also huge. And all of that is likely coming out of your pocket if you or one of your people did something wrong.

Also, it’s the same with preventing overlooked risk as planting trees, where the old saying is: “The best time to plant a tree is thirty years ago.”

But as we can’t turn the clock back, the present is the best we can do.

Who’s responsible?

Alas, for all damage or injury caused by any incident that was overlooked by anyone in your team, your subcontractor or you as a business owner, the buck stops with you. And this is regardless of whether it was foreseeable, unforeseeable, accidental, malicious or whatever.

Yes, there may be some excuses or other ways to reduce your liability, like ignorance or accident, but at the end of the day, unless your defence holds up, you will be responsible for any consequence or outcome.

Furthermore, claiming ignorance is not a ‘get out of jail’ card. In any legal action, you – the defendant – will most likely be accused of negligence with an allegation similar to “you must have known, or if you didn’t know, you should have known” the consequence. All their objective will be to prove you were negligent.

So, it’s very much in your own interest to protect yourself and your business by identifying and eliminating all overlooked risks where possible.

And the only sure way you can protect yourself is by prevention.

But I’m insured…

Yes, you may well ask: “Why me, after all that’s what we are insured for?” A good question, but how well do you understand the terms and conditions of your insurance and the obligations you have, especially when the claims are for a very serious or catastrophic outcome?

Like with all insurances, you must have read and complied with all the fine print because there is no doubt that as the claims get more serious, your obligations are also increased.

And because of all that, even if you manage to settle a claim, it may very well be that the blame will be shared.  So, your insurer will require you to share in any settlement for any responsibility attributed to you.

In addition, there may be substantial excesses for you to pay for any claim, as well as an extra premium next year. In fact, you could even find your policy cancelled and not renewed.

Likewise, regardless of whether the claim is well-founded or vexatious, the time and trouble you and your key staff will have to devote to dealing with it, as well as your eye-watering lawyers’ fees, etc., will often make you take your already weeping eye off the rest of your business until it’s all settled. And the cost and time of that alone can be astounding, not to mention the possible years the worry can take out of your life.

Certainly, in hindsight, all that will make you wish you had included the identification of this type of hidden risk embedded into your system, as in that way, you can go on with business as usual because no defending will be needed.

The risk

Just consider, in our industry, you get involved in work that may appear to be simple and routine all the time. It’s where something you have to do or are asked to do by a customer seems like straightforward work for you and your team.

But then, when the work is underway, it accidentally or unexpectedly goes pear-shaped in a big way, with a “well, who would have thought that?” catastrophic consequence for your customer, an injury to their or your employees or affecting one or more people in the public at large, your life can be turned upside down.

And given the nature of all the different things we’re involved with every day, it doesn’t have to be only one of those unusual tasks. In fact, it’s more likely to be one of your everyday humdrum jobs, as their degree of difficulty is usually taken for granted.

Also, the exponential growth of solar and EV charging installations, where even the replacement of one panel in an array on a sunny day has multiple very serious risk factors, is now growing into dealing with ever larger batteries and supplies from different generating and electricity storage devices, which is creating an OHS minefield.

So, the chances of a potentially disastrous overlooked risk popping up at any time you or one of your people set foot in a customer’s premises or worksite and the like are becoming frightening.

After all, in our electrotechnology industry, we work daily with potentially lethal voltages and currents with many work practices that can create or become hazards that result in life-changing or life-ending consequences if you (or those working for you) get it wrong.

Is there a defence?

Although you may have some defence against the unknown, most will be situations where circumstances caused for the foreseeable to be overlooked – or worse, disregarded – will be difficult to defend.

This is where you end up being partly or totally at fault in contributing to or causing serious damage, injury or possibly death. And if you are found negligent, that would be difficult to just explain away.

Furthermore, the defence of placing the responsibility – the blame – on the employee or employees involved is likely to be challenged and bounced back to you by both them and their lawyers as being your fault, because they will claim it was as a result of an inadequacy in your training.

And even where causes aren’t directly attributable to anything you or your people have or haven’t done, there can be potentially hazardous causes that may not have been able to be foreseen at the time, but once an OHS investigator and possibly their lawyer start searching, you may very well be included in defending negative findings, remembering after the fact hindsight always has 20-20 vision’.

So, as noted also earlier, it’s better to avoid creating the problem in the first place.

Are you prepared?

Hopefully, you will already have a robust and detailed system in place covering both your internal admin and external working practices, activities, etc. So, you have already embedded steps in your system that have dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’ to ensure all encountered risks are identified at the start, which will overcome these hidden risks that appear.

Great. Because that means you already have all your training, work practices, processes, procedures, supervision, regular safety and other internal auditing well under control. If so, if the assessment and management of these potentially overlooked risk hazards is not already included, it will be a simple matter of adding the identification and elimination of these potential hazards and the training for staff and new inductions.

Then, with verification and monitoring also in place, it will protect you, your workers and your customers from any problems by preventing such situations from arising.

What if your systems are not up to scratch? Sorry, but you will have little or no defence.