Plan · Permit · Prove · Walk away if it isn’t safe
Safe Isolation Starts Before You Touch the Board
The hardest part of safe isolation is not always the tester. Sometimes it is the customer asking, “How long will you be?” The manager saying, “Can we keep that bit live?” The lost day’s pay if you walk away.
This site is a practical learning hub for planning, communicating and carrying out safe electrical isolation in the real world.
Explore the 10-point check. Learn the language. Practise the scenarios. Share the near misses.
The real job starts before the tools come out
Safe isolation begins at booking — with permission, expectations and authority — not when you arrive with a tester. By the time you are at the board, most of the risk has already been decided by the conversations that came before it.
Who agreed the supply could go off? For how long? Who else is affected? When those questions are answered early, the technical steps are calm and unhurried. When they are not, every probe reading happens under pressure.
Real-world pressure
On a real job the pressure does not wait its turn. It interrupts the run like RPG dialogue — mid-task, mid-thought.
- Customer“Can I just finish this meeting?”
- Site manager“How long will this take?”
- Tenant“The freezer is full.”
- Business owner“We can’t shut down card payments.”
- Engineer“I’ve driven four hours to get here.”
Every technical step happens inside a human situation. Pressure changes decisions.
The 10-point check — Isolation Quest
Ten three-phase voltage checks, in order, proving the board is dead. Watch the level fill as each reading confirms “no voltage present”.
- L1 – L2
- L1 – L3
- L2 – L3
- L1 – Earth
- L2 – Earth
- L3 – Earth
- L1 – Neutral
- L2 – Neutral
- L3 – Neutral
- Neutral – Earth
These ten tests sit inside the wider procedure — plan, permit, identify, isolate, lock off, prove, test, re-prove. The ten checks are not the whole job.
A refused isolation is a safety signal, not just a scheduling problem.
If the worker loses money every time they choose safety, the system is quietly rewarding risk. The near-miss board exists to make those moments visible — so the next person sees the pressure coming.
Submit a near miss