Clearing the conduit confusion

One of the greatest concerns to the health and safety of registered cables is a complete disregard of the Australian Standard AS 1345-1995 ‘Identification of the contents of pipes, conduits and ducts’ by the electrical industry.

There is also a lot of confusion about the colour and use of conduits. There are rules and standards for the compliant use of conduits and failure to comply can have serious consequences, such as heavy fines, imprisonment and/or licence disqualification.

The new workplace health and safety laws have redefined ‘due diligence’ and introduced significant changes to officers’ responsibilities and liabilities. To clarify, officers (includes a person, corporation, director, manager or employee) are seen as exercising due diligence if they take reasonable steps to ensure that they: understand the nature of the operations and the associated hazards and risks; and have appropriate resources and processes for risk and hazard elimination or minimisation.

The defence to the charge of not performing due diligence is a ‘reasonable excuse’. This means that the person had a reasonable excuse for failing to exercise due diligence. What constitutes a reasonable excuse is determined based on the facts of the case and the court’s assessment of what the community would regard as reasonable, ie, a reasonable knowledge of hazards and risks in the industry in which you work have been met. The following example illustrates the severe consequences of ignoring AS 1345.

One Sunday morning, a data centre design manager involved in a refurbishment project gets a call from the data centre facility manager saying, “You need to get here now! The data cabler has electrocuted himself. The police are here.” On arrival at the data centre site, the design manager sees organised chaos - police, ambulance, WorkSafe and the ACMA. He wonders why ACMA is on the incident site. As he looks for a place to park his car, he thinks about all the meetings and reviews he will have to attend and all the paperwork that he will have to submit. He wonders about how the event may have happened and worries about the consequences. The WorkSafe investigators determine that the cabler cut through a white conduit printed with ‘Electrical’, instead of the white one next to it, printed with ‘Communications’. The data centre manager is held liable and charged with negligence causing fatality. The project manager and designer are also under investigation, and expected to be charged. The design manager faces possible imprisonment or massive fines. This is not an exaggeration or scare mongering. What would you have done to prevent something like this happening to you? Or if you were in this situation, how would you have protected yourself from prosecution?

The answer lies in understanding and correctly applying three areas of legislation: the WHS Act, the Crimes Acts, the Telecommunications Act plus Australian Standard AS 1345.

Table 1: AS1345 base identification colours for pipes.

The Australian Standard AS 1345:1995 ‘Identification of the contents of pipes conduits and ducts’ (based on international standards) specifies the relevant colours for hazardous services. To state the obvious again, these standard colours are used to identify hazardous services provided in conduits. It should be clearly noted that the basic colour scheme for pipe identification has remained the same in AS 1345:1995 as it was in the 1982 edition, ie, conduit colour schemes have not changed in 33 years. Furthermore, the mandatory Wiring Rules, AS/CA S009:2013, state that conduit colours shall be in accordance with AS 1345. The base identification colour is a single colour intended to provide immediate information on the contents/hazard within the pipe. When applying the base identification colour, the pipes, conduits or ducts can either be painted completely with the identifying colour or they can be regularly banded with the identifying colour. Now, would this be regarded as a ‘reasonable knowledge of the hazards and risks in the industry in which you work’? Of course - this requirement has been around for 33 years, so it is reasonable knowledge.

The other great concern is the significant lack of understanding of the Telecommunications Act by the electrical industry (electrical engineers, designers and installers). To explain how this supports a charge of not performing due diligence, allow me to outline the key definitions and sections within this 18-year-old Act, before running through a typical building service installation.

Under Section 7 (Definitions) of the Act:

• Telecommunications network - means a system, or series of systems, that carries, or is capable of carrying, communications by means of guided and/or unguided electromagnetic energy. The reference to the carriage of communications by means of ‘unguided electromagnetic energy’ refers to communications by means of radiocommunications - Explanatory Statement Telecommunications Regulations 2001. This definition states that a telecommunications network does not only include fixed line networks, it also encompasses radiocommunications networks. As an example: LTE/4G carrier networks.
• Communications includes any communication (a) whether between persons and persons, things and things or persons and things; (b) whether in the form of speech, music or other sounds; (c) whether in the form of data; (d) whether in the form of text; (e) whether in the form of visual images (animated or otherwise); (f) whether in the form of signals; (g) whether in any other form; and (h) whether in any combination of forms.
• Line means a wire, cable, optical fibre, tube, conduit, waveguide or other physical medium used, or for use, as a continuous artificial guide for or in connection with carrying communications by means of guided electromagnetic energy. This definition is a little ‘tricky’. It should be noted that a line includes the cable pathway (conduits, cable tray, ducts, etc - other physical medium used in connection with carrying communications). This means that a registered cabler shall install the (non-carrier) comms cable pathway.
• Connected, in relation to (a) a telecommunications network; (b) a facility; (c) customer cabling; or (d) customer equipment. Includes connection otherwise than by means of physical contact, eg, a connection by means of radiocommunications.

The above point is not very clear, but the connection by means of ‘radiocommunications’ is very important. This means that if you have a network controller with a 4G card in it, it is considered to be ‘connected’ to a telecommunications network. Everything installed after it is customer cabling and needs to be installed by a registered cabler.

Now that we’ve understood the key definitions, let’s apply them to the key clauses of the Act; Section 20 and Section 21.

Section 20 states that ‘Customer cabling means a line that is used, installed ready for use or intended for use on the customer side of the boundary of a telecommunications network.’ The most significant word in this clause is the word ‘intent’. It does not matter if the line will be connected to a telecommunications network at the time of installation, or in the planned future. If the line, during its installation life, has the potential to connect directly or indirectly to a telecommunications network, it is Customer Cabling. In the ‘age’ of interconnectivity, it is a foreseeable certainty that this will happen during the life cycle of a line.

Section 21 states that customer equipment is:

(a) any equipment, apparatus, tower, mast, antenna or other structure or thing that is used, installed ready for use or intended for use on the customer side of the boundary of a telecommunications network; or

(b) any system (whether software based or otherwise) that is used, installed ready for use or intended for use on the customer side of the boundary of a telecommunications network.

Now let us apply these definitions and sections from the Act to a real scenario. An experienced electrical engineer, with supervision from a principal electrical engineer designed a networked lighting control system. The instruction by the manufacturer and designer was to install the CAT5 cable to the sensors in with the LV power cable, in the same ‘electrical’ conduit, all coming back to the switch room. The sensors were on the same light poles as the lights. The conduit had electrical printed on it. The argument was: it would save money and this is how it had been done for 15 years. In addition, the electrician will do the maintenance. The manufacturer also strongly supported this view. The system was eventually networked but a rat chewed the cables. The network equipment was damaged. A communications technician went out to the site to fix/replace the damaged network card. He was replacing the box, so he disconnected the line, not expecting dangerous voltage travelling through, and touched it. There were no major injuries but he spent a day in hospital on a heart monitor. He was lucky, the injuries could have been a lot worse.

*Lawrence McKenna, Senior Telecommunications/ICT Systems Engineer (CPEng NPER RPEQ), Jacobs and Director BICSI South Pacific. Lawrence has over 24 years of Telecommunications and ICT Systems Industry experience.