If you aren’t clued up on what is Arc Flash and if your team needs arc flash protection that’s ok! You’re not alone. In fact, at LION we speak to people every day who are not too sure what an Arc Flash is, or whether they need to protect their staff from the risks of one. While Arc Flash is not a new problem, it is one that is, rightly so, gaining more traction in health and safety departments.
An Arc Flash can kill a person or leave them with life-altering injuries if they are not properly protected. PPE and safety workwear is your last line of defence, and likely you are looking into an Arc Flash study to determine whether or not you need arc-rated protection for your teams, as well as looking at better ways to mitigate the risk of an Arc Flash.
If that’s the case, this quick guide will help you on your way.
By the end of this article, you will know what an Arc Flash study is, what is involved in one, who needs to carry one out, and how to move forward.
An Arc Flash study is a risk assessment dedicated to assessing a workplace environment to determine Arc Flash hazards. An electrical safety expert should carry out an Arc Flash study to ensure that a company fully understands the risks posed to its team and how to mitigate those risks best.
An Arc Flash study aims to answer the question of how big the arc event would be.
Depending on your industry, there can be multiple components to an Arc Flash assessment, including fault level studies, comprehensive site surveys, and Arc Flash calculations.
An Arc Flash study identifies both low and high-risk areas of an Arc Flash incident. It assesses the potential severity of the injury at a given distance to locate the protection boundary at which there is a severe danger of second-degree burns.
While companies are not currently obliged to carry out an Arc Flash assessment in the UK, many organisations are starting to do so due for a variety of reasons, be it a new awareness of Arc Flash risk, or high-profile cases in the media where companies were sued following injury or death due to not mitigating the risks properly or providing adequate protection.
We recommend that a qualified electrical engineer carries out your study.
Here are some further resources:
If you have had, or are waiting to have an Arc Flash study, here are two articles that could help you on your way to Arc Flash protection success: