Utilities - Fibre Optics line clearance - Are UA tickets required?

[Fawn-jd]

Currently working for a communications company who have decided to look into bringing the tree cutting in-house and a small group of us are currently going through all of our basic training (NPTC - units 0039-20, 0039-21, 0039-38 all done with aerial still to go) and already hold all of the relevant tickets to work on Openreach network, but would we still need any of the UA tickets? 

 

I know these are mainly focussed on live lines but would fibre still be classed with this? We do still get a fair few LV joint user poles and finding it difficult to find out we would need these tickets also! 

 

[Mark Bolam]

I’m guessing here mate, but the fact that a few of the poles are shared would lead me to say you need at least basic UA tickets.

Which will add some zeros to the training bill!

 

Plenty of UA qualified people on here will correct me I’m sure.

[Steven P]

I was going to add that some specialised fibre optics also have a LV pwer cable in them or are routed along side one. If you have the budget to do the training then it will add a confidence to the customer

[AA Teccie (Paul)]

9 hours ago, Steven P said:

I was going to add that some specialised fibre optics also have a LV pwer cable in them or are routed along side one. If you have the budget to do the training then it will add a confidence to the customer

Absolutely - and at least now there's no longer a requirement to 're-certify' every 3 years (I don't believe), it reverts to the normal 5 yearly update / refresher training recommendation.  

[Fawn-jd]

Thanks All! 

Our company has been saying we would only need this if we were working on power, but it has been definitely been bugging me as mentioned above some fibre does have LV (none of our contracts currently have this luckily) and part of our basic overhead training for cabling is for working on JU poles & in proximity to OH power!
Definitely going to push for the basic UA tickets to start that's for sure! 

[Dan Maynard]

I'd push for UA1 at least, which is basic electrical awareness and only 2 days. I have no intention of doing utility arb but it's been really useful - learnt a lot about what's up the poles, and how far to steer clear of things.

 

Definitely did things before that I wouldn't do now eg I wasn't driving the telehandler we were using to pull stump out of ditch but it was too close to the 11kV, I didn't even know it was 11kV at the time or I'd have been more scared.

[openspaceman]

56 minutes ago, Dan Maynard said:

UA1 at least, which is basic electrical awareness and only 2 days.

One day in my case as no one else turned up. Interesting subject though, I still look out for pairs of lines on wooden poles to estimate the voltage.

 

I never got any further as I got retired.

[Dan Maynard]

2 hours ago, openspaceman said:

One day in my case as no one else turned up. Interesting subject though, I still look out for pairs of lines on wooden poles to estimate the voltage.

 

I never got any further as I got retired.

I do too, it's another thing you can fascinate the wife with as you drive around pointing out trees you worked on.

[Mark Bolam]

[Dan Maynard]

Yep, that's the one.