It's déjà vu. Whether you're involved in electrical design or installation, you've seen this happen before: The lowest bid price supersedes quality , qualification, and experience.

 Unfortunately, this scenario is taking place in the electrical maintenance sector as well. The front office says money is tight and that the required yearly electrical maintenance will be submitted for bid to all comers as well as to your favored, knowledgeable company. This should be where the red flag goes up. Whatever the initial "savings" gained, they literally may go up in smoke.

Let me cite an example (a true case history) provided by John Moore, a former president of the InterNational Electrical Testing Association (NETA) and a good friend of EC&M. A medium-sized food processing plant originally built in the early 1950s had switch gear of the same vintage. The plant engineer, who had been with the plant for many years, was highly respected and very knowledgeable of his electrical system. To keep the 40-year-old switch- gear at optimum performance capability, he had the two main circuit breakers retrofitted with solid-state tripping performance capability, and even built a special room with filtered air around the switch- gear lineup.

The plant engineer followed NFPA 70B recommendations for preventive electrical maintenance and had the plant's switch- gear serviced by a qualified service organization every two to three years. As a result of these efforts, the plant had never suffered an in-service electrical failure.

One day, the "edict" came down from corporate: "We need to cut costs; from now on, we go out to bid, and the lowest bid gets the order." The plant engineer reluctantly put aside the longtime relation- ships and trust he had built over the years with two qualified testing companies and went out to open bid.

 To the plant engineer's surprise, the low bidder turned out to be a local contractor that he was familiar with. He had no knowledge that this firm even did field 

John A. DeDad,
Editor-in-Chief

maintenance testing work. All he knew was that it was a reputable firm that also manufactured some electrical products.  Nevertheless, the company's bid was low, and the plant stood to save $1500.

As it had in previous years, the scheduled weekend came for the utility shut- down. However, this shutdown seemed a little different. The contractor didn't insist on a tailgate safety meeting prior to the shutdown to make sure everyone under- stood the hazards involved, how to use personnel protective equipment, and what procedures to use to ensure that the job would be conducted safely, accurately, and efficiently. In fact, the low bidder's people already were wandering about, removing panels from the back of the switch gear and exposing live bus bars way ahead of the scheduled utility shutdown. A worker began vacuuming the open and energized switch gear and, after a few hours, decided to take a smoke break, leaving his vacuum behind the open switch gear.

The worker had not yet left the room when the explosion occurred. The concussion blew out 75 window panes at the front of the building. In a matter of minutes, the 3000A switch gear was reduced to a useless mass of molten metal and debris. Miraculously, no one was injured. Thanks to the vacuumer's smoke break, no one was behind the switch gear.

When the thick black smoke finally cleared and the fire trucks left, the plant engineer was left with many unanswered questions.

  ~ Why wasn't a previously thought out method or procedure used?

  ~ Why wasn't a tailgate safety meeting held?

 ~ Why weren't the contractor's workers equipped with protective equipment? 

  ~ Why was the work performed live when all the contractor had to do was wait for the scheduled utility outage?

The resultant cost of this "low" bid was astronomical. The switchgear replacement alone was $175,000, not to mention the building concussion and smoke damage, the loss of production, and lost wages. And after several years, the cost of litigation is still adding up.

The old cliché "You get what you pay for" clearly does not go far enough in cases such as this. The true cost of this low bid was more than 50 times the bid price, not counting the extra worry, concern, and aggravation. Fortunately, no one paid the ultimate price with his or her life. Unfortunately, many do on other such maintenance testing jobs.

What's my point in citing this example? As John Moore succinctly points out, "Selecting a qualified service organization to maintain your electrical systems might just be the most critical element of electrical maintenance."

NETA suggests the following minimum criteria for making such a selection before considering price:

 ~ Is electrical field service the regular business of the proposed contractor, or is it a company simply trying to increase sagging profits by entering into areas in which it isn't proficient?

 ~ Has the company been in field service business for at least two years, and is it equipped for the job?

 ~ Does the contractor have a written safety plan? Ask to see it. Check the contractor's OSHA 200 logs. Ask what the company's OSHA incident rate is.

  ~ Are the contractor's field technicians certified by NETA or NICET?

In other words, check the proposed con- tractor out before sending the purchase order; you could be committing your plant to the most expensive "cheap" job it's ever had.