Re-defining the role of Electrical tradespeople

Even at the beginning of the twenty first century, almost every maintenance review we do uncovers a raft of electrical tasks and routines that serve no purpose apart from raising the likelihood of equipment failures.

When I was a baggy shorts apprentice back in the 1980's we used to do lots of tasks like opening up motor termination blocks, and marshaling cubicles and checking for tightness of the terminals.

And then, at least once a year, there would be a huge influx of large DC motors from the mining shovels and draglines which we were supposed to overhaul.

This ended up being a change of the bearings, re-painting the windings to restore the insulations original resistance to failure, and running a wheatstone bridge over the windings looking for indications of early life failures.

In the vast majority of cases this was a dramatic waste of time! And I cannot believe that this thinking still exists today.

Something I have learned - if it is not subject to ambient vibration, and the cables don't move - then nothing is going to come loose! (Period)

In fact, you run the risk of loosening the terminals by mucking around with them. As well as messing up the gaskets, introducing foreign matter and moisture, and a whole host of other issues under the heading of "messing with things that are working fine".

In the case of DC motor overhauls, most of this stuff can be done in situ. Skimming armatures, replacing and bedding in brushes, and getting rid of excess carbon build up are all small and regular tasks that need to be done in situ, not in an overhaul situation.

Bearings should NOT be replaced on a hard time basis! This is one of the greatest scams of modern asset management. Do you really need to re-paint the windings to restore the insulation? I have yet to find a case where not doing this has led to early failures. (But there are many cases where interfering has caused failure!)

So what should Sparkies do then?

There are routine tasks that electricians should be doing, and some of these are above. But principally electricians are there for the hard hitting end of the deal. The moment when it all turns to muck and we need to rapidly get to the bottom of the problem.

The job creation works as outlined above are more likely to lead to failure rather than prevent or predict it. The heart of the problem is our attitudes towards maintenance people and their employment.

If hey aren't actively engaged in maintaining assets then we see them as wasting our funds. Yet with a small mind change we could employ the electrical trades in a lot of higher end tasks such as analytical problem solving and reviewing general maintenance practices.

We don't need to force them into activities that are detrimental to our operations...surely.