scope:

These requirements apply to all persons required to work near any HV cable or cable route, both those controlled from the Electrical Control Room (ECR) and the independent uncontrolled systems. It applies to all such insulated HV cables, including third-party cables, on Network Rail (NR) owned property.

In this standard work is described as any excavation, vehicular movement, construction task, vegetation clearance or other activity that might reasonably cause damage to a cable or the cable route when undertaken within 1m of any HV cable or cable route. This includes any work where the use of machinery or plant may allow any part of the machine or plant to come within 1m of the cables or cable route when in use and any asset protection works.

This standard excludes the following which should either be undertaken using different controls and/or standards, i.e. NR/L3/ELP/21067, NR/L3/ELP/29987 or do not affect the integrity of the cable or cable route:

a) any general visual inspections, walking access to work sites or places of safety where there is no likelihood of disturbance to the integrity of the HV cable routes.

b) any work that involves any form of disturbance to the containment of any HV cable or cable route.

c) all works that involves access to the cables themselves, associated joints, terminations or other distribution equipment or switchgear.

d) any works on the cable and/or cable route.

e) any work on a bare conductor.

Purpose

The purpose of this standard is to define the procedure and competence requirements for the assessment and control of risks when working near all high voltage (HV) cables and cable routes on Network Rail property.