Problem solved: unnecessarily long downtime without technical drawings

As the owner of an electrical installation, you are required to have documentation and technical drawings available for all machinery. If these are not available, it could create dangerous situations for those working with the machines. Moreover, troubleshooting takes an unnecessarily long time if these documents are missing.

Documentation for electrical installations includes a manual, operating instructions and technical drawings. If faults occur, mechanics need the drawings in order to make a targeted search for the location of the fault and especially where to connect a signal or cable.

An external or recently employed engineer does not know the machine (yet) and therefore does not know how it operates or what the machine's circuit diagram looks like. The unintentional switching on of any (part of an) installation could have serious consequences, such as electrocution, short circuit, electrical arc or explosion, which, in the worst case, could result in death..

To avoid any risks, there is only one safe solution and that is measurement. This takes an awful amount of time, because there is still a lot to investigate and identify on site. It can take days to measure everything properly and thoroughly. With a drawing, the breakdown could be resolved in about three hours. As a result, your machine is down for significantly less time, which saves a lot of money.

Working safely according to applicable standards

In all European countries, the EN 50110 standard applies, which is a set of European safety regulations for working with and using electrical installations. It is not a law, but an agreement with guidelines on minimum safety requirements.

In the Netherlands, for example, that standard is translated into the NEN3140 standard. Other countries in Europe have their own applicable safety standard. Our field service engineers are certified to perform work according to the applicable standards. They know the risks and how to prevent them. But even so, they cannot work safely and quickly without documentation.

Getting documentation in order

Upon installation of the machine by the supplier, the documentation is handed directly to the new owner. In each control box and/or installation there is a special documentation folder or compartment where documentation can be kept.

Nine times out of ten, the drawings cannot be found there, but somewhere else in the office or at the bottom of the control box covered in a thick layer of dust or dirt. In addition to keeping physical documentation in the intended place, keeping digital documentation as a back-up copy is also recommended as a fall back.

The advice of our field service engineers is to keep machine documentation clean, up to date and easily accessible. This is for the safety of your own employees, but also with a view to transferring responsibility to external specialists or successors. With proper documentation in good condition, external companies, such as UNIS Group, can move quickly and get to work immediately on identifying and resolving the problem in the event of downtime.

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