If your insurance carrier, your corporate safety group, or an OSHA inspector has asked you for an arc flash study, you are in the right place. An arc flash study tells you how much energy each piece of equipment in your building can release, how far back a worker has to stand, and what gear he needs to have on before he opens the door. Those numbers end up on a label stuck to the equipment itself, so the guy working the panel at six in the morning can read it without looking anything up.

An arc flash can release enough energy to cause fatal burns from several feet away. Without a study, nobody in the building knows which panels are the bad ones, and PPE selection turns into a guess. NFPA 70E is the standard that governs this work and OSHA enforces against it. We handle the whole job: the field work, the engineering, the labels, and the training for your crew.

Arc flash and electrical safety services

What we will need to collect

To model your electrical system accurately, we typically gather the following during the on-site visit:

• One-line diagram (we can develop one if you do not have a current version)
• The available fault current from your utility
• Circuit breaker nameplate data and protective settings
• Cable type, sizes, count, and lengths
• Conduit type
• Equipment types and their configuration

From this we produce an overall report on your electrical system and the potential incident energy that may be released at each exposed energized point in the distribution system, so you can outfit your employees with the correct personal protective equipment. Missing several of these items is normal and does not stop the project, field data collection is part of the work.

How the job actually runs

Most supervisors have never had an arc flash study done before and want to know what it looks like from their side. Here is the sequence:

• 1. A short scoping call. We ask what kind of facility you have, roughly how many panels and pieces of gear are involved, and whether you have current drawings. That is enough for us to price the job and give you a timeline.
• 2. Field work at your site. Our people come out and walk your electrical system, recording breaker data, conductor sizes and lengths, and equipment configurations. We work around your production schedule, not the other way around.
• 3. The engineering. Off-site, we run the short circuit analysis, the coordination study, and the incident energy calculations per IEEE 1584-2018. Nothing about this part interrupts your operation.
• 4. Labels and paperwork. We come back, apply the labels to your equipment, and hand you a report with the boundaries, PPE requirements, and anything we recommend fixing. If you want your crew trained, we do that on-site too.

When it is finished you have something concrete to put in front of an inspector, an insurance auditor, or your corporate safety group: a current study, labeled equipment, and training records.

Straight answers to what we get asked most

Do we have to shut the plant down?

Not the whole facility. Some data collection requires equipment to be opened and de-energized, so a portion of the work has to be scheduled around outages. We plan that with you up front and work it into your existing maintenance windows wherever possible, rather than asking you to create new downtime.

We do not have one-line diagrams. Is that a problem?

No. This is the single most common situation we run into, especially in older buildings and facilities that have been added onto over the years. Developing accurate one-line drawings is part of the work, and you keep them when we are done, which is worth having on its own.

What does an arc flash study cost?

It comes down to how big your electrical system is, how many panels and buses have to be evaluated, whether current drawings exist, and where you are located. Anyone quoting you a firm number without asking those questions is guessing. Send us the basics and we will scope it and give you a real figure.

How often does this have to be redone?

NFPA 70E calls for review at least every five years, and sooner any time something changes that affects available fault current or how fast a breaker clears a fault, such as a transformer swap, a new feeder, or added equipment. If your last study is older than five years, it should be looked at.

Who is this actually required for?

Any facility where employees work on or near energized equipment. In practice that means almost every warehouse, plant, and commercial building with switchgear, panelboards, or motor control centers that get opened while live. If your maintenance crew opens electrical enclosures, this applies to you.

Key NFPA 70E requirements for employers

A compliant electrical safety program addresses each of the following areas:

• Training requirements, including qualified and unqualified person training and retraining at intervals not exceeding three years
• Employer and contractor responsibility for documenting hazards, procedures, and training records
• A written electrical safety program per Article 110.5
• Energized electrical work permits with documented justification and approval
• Job briefings before work begins on or near energized equipment
• Establishing an electrically safe work condition, including lockout/tagout procedures

OSHA and NFPA 70E: how enforcement works

OSHA does not publish arc flash calculation methods of its own. Instead, the general industry electrical standards in Subpart S of 29 CFR Part 1910 are enforced with reference to NFPA 70E as the recognized consensus standard for safe electrical work practices. In practice, that means your facility is evaluated against the current edition of NFPA 70E during an inspection or after an incident.

Key employer obligations include:

• Safety-related work practices. The employer must provide safety-related work practices and train employees, who then implement them.
• Flame-resistant clothing and PPE. Employees must use flame-resistant clothing and appropriate protective equipment selected according to the incident energy exposure associated with the specific task.
• Field markings. Electrical equipment such as switchboards and panelboards likely to require examination, adjustment, servicing, or maintenance while energized must be field marked to warn qualified persons of potential arc flash hazards.

A current study, correct labels, training records, and a written program are the first four items reviewed in an inspection or an insurance audit. If any one of them is missing or out of date, the rest of your program is difficult to defend.

Serving commercial and industrial facilities across Florida

We provide arc flash hazard analysis, shock hazard analysis, labeling, and NFPA 70E training for facilities throughout the entire state of Florida, including Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach, Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, Lakeland, Daytona Beach, Gainesville, Tallahassee, and surrounding communities. Our consultants travel to your location for all field data collection, label application, and training.

We work with manufacturing plants, data centers, healthcare facilities, utilities, water and wastewater operations, commercial buildings, food and beverage processing, and educational institutions. Any facility with energized switchgear, panelboards, or motor control centers that are serviced while live needs a current arc flash study. Learn more about our statewide arc flash consulting.