12
OVERHEAD POWER LINES
NOVA SKILL MODULE M-12
Read: 4 min
Full rules: NEW — no Nova SOP yet
DRAFT — written to the OSHA baseline because Nova has no written overhead standard. Adam approves this before anybody is trained on it.
You do not have to touch it. Electricity jumps. Masts, dump beds, and ladders kill men through the air, and the man on the ground usually dies with the man on the machine.
Do it in this order — every time
- LOOK UP before anything goes up. Every site, every time, said out loud in the JSA.
- TEN FEET minimum for lines up to 50kV — that covers most of what Nova works under.
- TWENTY FEET if you don't know the voltage, or if it's transmission — steel towers, big insulators.
- Assume every line is live and bare. The black coating is weather cover, not insulation.
- Dump beds all the way down before the truck rolls. Most contacts happen with a bed still up.
- A dedicated spotter for every mast, boom, or ladder move — one man watching that and nothing else.
- Carry rods, pipe, and ladders horizontal near lines. Never vertical.
- Machine contacts a line: STAY IN THE CAB. You are safe in it. Drive clear if it still moves.
- Only if you must get off: JUMP CLEAR, both feet together. Never touch machine and ground at once. Then shuffle away in small steps, feet never apart — a normal stride across energized ground kills you.
NOBODY APPROACHES A MACHINE IN CONTACT. Not to help, not to look, not to pull somebody off. The ground around it is energized for a long way out. Call 911 and the utility, keep everybody back, and wait for the utility to say it is dead.
NEVER — THESE FOUR END IT
- Never work inside 10 feet of a line without the utility de-energizing or covering it.
- Never guess at voltage. Unknown means 20 feet.
- Never raise a mast, bed, or ladder without looking up first and saying it out loud.
- Never walk up to a machine that is touching a line.
Signed off when he can do all three — watched, not talked about
| States 10 feet and 20 feet and when each one applies. | |
| Walks a site and points out every overhead before being asked. | |
| Demonstrates the shuffle — feet together, small steps — off a machine. | |
Trainee name / date
FIELD SUPERVISOR initials / date — only he signs