At present in Jones Engineering over 8000 pieces of plant and equipment are registered on the company plant database, with almost 6500 of these requiring PA testing every 3 months. Health and Safety regulations require that electrical appliances are safe and maintained to prevent harm to workers. Testing involves a visual inspection of the equipment and any flexible cables for good condition, and also where required, verification of earthing continuity, and a test of the soundness of insulation between the current carrying parts and any exposed metal that may be touched. No electrical equipment may be used unless it has a valid PA test label attached. Even battery operated tools cannot be used as the battery chargers must be tested. This can potentially lead to a lot of wasted time on projects when tools can’t be used because their test is out of date. All brand new tools must be tested before they can be used on sites which can be a headache when something specific is bought for an emergency job. To alleviate this occurring in Jones Engineering we have 5 no. PA test machines located around the country. As a company rule all new mechanical plant and tools are delivered to our base in Coolquay. Here the tools are registered on the database and branded. We have recently bought a new PA tester for Coolquay so all new tools can be tested before being sent to site. This means all new tools will be in a “ready-to-use” state when they arrive on site. There is also a new colour coding for PA test labels. A different colour label is used for each 3 month spell making it much easier to see if a tool has had a valid test.
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