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.
Before the tools come out
The real job starts before the tools come out
Safe isolation does not begin when you arrive with a tester. It begins at the booking — in the permission you secure, the expectations you set, and the authority you carry onto site. By the time you reach the board, the most important decisions about whether the job can be done safely have usually already been made.
Get that groundwork right and the technical steps become almost mechanical. Get it wrong and every check happens under negotiation, with someone over your shoulder asking how long you’ll be.
Permission, expectations and authority are agreed before you arrive — not improvised at the board.
The pressure, named
Every technical step happens inside a human situation
Every technical step happens inside a human situation. Pressure changes decisions.
- 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.’
The 10-point check
Ten voltage checks, in order
Three-phase · dead testing sequence
- L1 – L2Line 1 to Line 2
- L1 – L3Line 1 to Line 3
- L2 – L3Line 2 to Line 3
- L1 – EarthLine 1 to Earth
- L2 – EarthLine 2 to Earth
- L3 – EarthLine 3 to Earth
- L1 – NeutralLine 1 to Neutral
- L2 – NeutralLine 2 to Neutral
- L3 – NeutralLine 3 to Neutral
- Neutral – EarthNeutral to 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.
Forum · near misses
A refused isolation is a safety signal, not just a scheduling problem.
Submit a near missIf the worker loses money every time they choose safety, the system is quietly rewarding risk.
The safest electrician is not the one who can work around every obstacle. It is the one who sees the pressure coming early enough to control it.