Essential Equipment for Safely Accessing Underground Utilities

Electric power utility workers often face a range of other physical hazards on the job, particularly when working at height or underground. While risky work on towers and streetside poles is more publicly visible, the situations in which electric power utility workers need to access underground areas present special hazards and regulatory requirements. This article provides an overview of the important processes and specialized equipment municipal and private employers need to be familiar with in order to ensure confined spaces safety for underground utility work.

What are confined spaces?

Specific regulatory definitions of what constitutes an enclosed space vary slightly depending on country and municipality, and government-employed utility workers may be subject to different regulations than employees of private companies. Most regulations closely resemble the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the U.S.) criteria for confined spaces: areas with limited or restricted entry and exit which are not designed for continuous occupancy, but which workers enter and perform certain jobs.

 There is no official list of all the potential work areas that are and are not confined spaces, but many of the underground job sites accessed by electric power utility workers qualify, including manholes, trenches, and tunnels. To avoid injuries and comply with safety regulations, every employer, manager, and crew member of electric power utility crews need to understand the principles of confined spaces safety, particularly as it pertains to safe entry, exit, rescue, and material handling processes and equipment.

What makes confined spaces safety so important?

Many confined spaces present serious safety hazards: fall risks, exposure to powerful electricity or extreme temperatures, lack of oxygen or the presence of dangerous gasses or particulates, and the risk of becoming trapped or engulfed by materials or conditions within the space. All these hazards are made more serious by the most important feature of confined spaces – the limited accessibility that makes entry, exit, and potential rescue slower and more difficult than many other work areas. Specialized equipment must always be provided and used to support workers and rescuers and to ensure confined spaces safety.

Confined Space Entry, Exit, and Rescue Equipment

There is no room for error and no time for delays when utility crews are working underground. Regulations mandate that every employee must be equipped and prepared for a fast exit, and that all rescue equipment and personnel must be on-site and ready to deploy throughout the entire job. But what kind of equipment and preparation does this require?

Whether your crew members are installing or repairing a cable in a trench or accessing an underground power grid via manholes and tunnels, every worker in the confined space must be wearing a rescue harness. To provide fall protection and to allow for rapid extraction in the case of an emergency, that harness must be connected via a safety lanyard to a horizontal or vertical lifeline which are secured to an anchor point capable of handling the weight of the worker and their gear, as well as the additional weight of a potential rescuer.

Anchorage Solutions

To safely work in confined spaces where no permanent or built-in anchor points are available, temporary anchorage equipment must be set up. When accessing underground spaces via manholes, hatchways, and other small openings, tripods can be an ideal anchor solution for attaching a vertical lifeline. An ideal tripod model must be able to handle the weight of multiple users at once, and it should have attachment points for multiple wire rope pulling hoists and other tools for raising and lowering people. Note that only hoists and other confined space lifting equipment certified for man-riding can be used for entry, exit, and rescue.

A vertical lifeline can also be supported by a boom-style anchor point. Accessing some underground spaces may require establishing a horizontal lifeline, in which case a pair of mast anchors may be required.

Confined Space Lifting Equipment and Material Handling

Protecting workers and rescuers is obviously the top priority in confined spaces safety. But complying with safety regulations and minimizing the chance of mishaps requires that great care be taken with lifting, lowering, and positioning tools, machinery, and other items when electric power utility teams access confined spaces.

As part of your confined space safety plan, you must detail the weight of any materials that will need to be handled, as well as specifying and providing equipment that will be used to do the job. A range of confined space lifting equipment can provide power, portability, and ability to work in tight spaces, including chain lever hoists and wire rope pulling hoists.

As noted above, confined space lifting equipment should not be attached to the same anchor point as a lifeline, unless that anchor is engineered and certified to support the weight of the material as well as any workers and rescuers that may also use it. Mast-style temporary anchor points can be ideal, supporting heavy loads without getting in the way of vertical lifeline systems.

Choosing Confined Space Equipment Partner

It’s your responsibility to protect electric power utility workers as they provide essential power to communities around the world. To keep them safe and to comply with safety regulations, you need the highest quality, most reliable equipment supported by extensive expertise in confined space safety and utility work. Tractel® are global leaders in safety and quality.

In addition to producing the category-defining tirfor® wire rope pulling hoist, Tractel® offers a complete range of confined space lifting equipment, anchor solutions, horizontal and vertical lifeline systems, and safety harnesses. Tractel® also provides the training, regulatory guidance, global support trusted by government and private utility operations around the world for over 70 years. Talk to a utility specialist today or visit Tractel.com.

You can also visit our dedicated Confined Space page to learn more about our solutions.