Article 110 — the program that everything else hangs on.
If Article 130 is what you do at the equipment, Article 110 is what makes you allowed to be there. It defines the electrical safety program, who counts as qualified, what you owe contractors, and how often you have to prove any of it.
An ESWC is now required wherever an electrical hazard exists, regardless of voltage. Qualification is explicitly task- and equipment-specific again. The LOTO program audit moved to a 3-year interval while the procedure audit stayed at one year. And the "field work audit" is now the "employee work practices audit."
§ Section map
Scope — general requirements for safety-related work practices.
Electrically safe work condition — when one is required. See below.
Electrical safety program — principles, controls, procedures, risk assessment, job briefing, incident investigation, auditing.
Training requirements — qualified and unqualified persons, emergency response, retraining.
Host and contract employers — the information exchange.
Test instruments and equipment — rating, condition, inspection.
Portable cord- and plug-connected equipment.
GFCI protection for maintenance and construction-related activities.
Overcurrent protection modification — don't defeat it.
Equipment use — within listing and labelling.
§ 110.2(B) — the sub-50 V change
An electrically safe work condition is required where an electrical hazard exists — not where a voltage threshold is exceeded. The 2027 edition explicitly addresses hazards that exist below 50 V.
For years, programs drew a line at 50 volts and treated everything under it as inherently safe. That was always wrong on the physics: at low voltage the hazard is the available current, and a battery string or a current transformer secondary has plenty of it.
- Battery systems — a 48 V string with 2,000 A of available short-circuit current carries a serious contact thermal hazard. See Article 360.
- CT secondaries — near-zero voltage across open terminals, dangerous current through them.
- DC control circuits at 24 V and 48 V.
If your electrical safety program contains any sentence of the form "below 50 volts an ESWC is not required," that sentence is now non-compliant. This is the single easiest 2027 finding for an auditor to write.
§ 110.3 — the electrical safety program
The program is the document that says how your organization does electrical safety. It has to be documented, implemented, and audited. Content the standard expects:
- Program principles, controls and procedures.
- A risk assessment procedure that identifies hazards, assesses risk and applies the hierarchy of risk controls — elimination first, PPE last.
- Condition of maintenance consideration (110.3(C)) — new informational note pointing to Informative Annex S and NFPA 70B.
- Job safety planning and job briefing (110.3(I)(1)).
- Incident investigation — including near-misses.
- Auditing (110.3(L)) — see below.
§ The three audits and their intervals
| Audit | Section | What it covers | Interval |
|---|---|---|---|
| Program audit | 110.3(L)(1) | The electrical safety program as a whole, against the standard | Not to exceed 3 years |
| Employee work practices audit | 110.3(L)(2) | Employees observed working, against the employer's program. Renamed from "field work audit" in 2027 | Not to exceed 1 year |
| LOTO program audit | 110.3(L)(3) | The overarching lockout/tagout policy | Not to exceed 3 years — was 1 |
| LOTO procedure audit | 110.3(L)(4) | Machine- and equipment-specific procedures | Not to exceed 1 year — matches OSHA 1910.147 |
Program and procedures written into one combined document, so the whole thing gets audited on whichever cycle someone remembers. Split them. The policy changes rarely; the equipment-specific procedures change every time a piece of gear is modified.
§ 110.4 — training and qualification
- Qualified person — has demonstrated skills and knowledge related to the construction and operation of the equipment and the installation, and has received safety training to identify and avoid the hazards involved.
- 110.4(A)(1)(b) — 2027 restores explicit language that a person may be qualified with respect to certain equipment and tasks and unqualified for others.
- Emergency response training (110.4(C)(1)) — CPR, AED, and release of a victim from contact. This is the training the additional person under 130.2(A)(2) must hold.
- Retraining at intervals not to exceed three years, and sooner on job change, new procedure, new technology, or an audit finding.
- Unqualified persons must be trained in, and familiar with, any electrical safety-related practices necessary for their safety.
The mixed population is the problem here. A data center routinely has security, IT and janitorial staff inside rooms containing exposed energized equipment. Those people are unqualified persons under the standard, and they still require training and, inside the limited approach boundary, an escort.
On the qualified side, "qualified on data center electrical" is not a thing. The same technician may be qualified on 480 V PDU work and unqualified on 15 kV switchgear. Your training matrix has to be built task by task and equipment class by equipment class.
§ 110.5 — host and contract employers
| Party | Owes |
|---|---|
| Host employer | Information about known hazards, the installation, and the safety-related work practices unique to the site. Must report observed contractor-related violations back to the contract employer. |
| Contract employer | Ensure its employees are trained and instructed in the host's hazards and practices, and advise the host of any hazards its own work will introduce. |
| Both | A documented meeting to coordinate the work and the exchange. |
The exchange happens verbally at a kickoff and is never written down. On a construction-adjacent data center project with a dozen subs, "we told them" is not a defensible record. Make it a signed form attached to the permit package.
§ 110.6 — test instruments
- Test instruments and accessories must be rated for the circuits and equipment they are used on — check the CAT rating against the location.
- Verify operation on a known voltage source before and after the absence-of-voltage test. Live–dead–live.
- 110.6(D), clarified in 2027 — portable test instruments must be visually inspected for external defects and damage; where a defect or damage could expose an employee to injury, the instrument must be removed from service until repaired.
A meter with a broken lead can read zero on a live conductor. The worker does everything right, gets a zero, and touches an energized part. Inspect the leads, and test the meter on a known source both before and after.
Build a program that survives contact with a real facility
The 16-hour class covers program construction, the audit cycles, the qualification matrix and the host/contract exchange — with your one-lines if we run it onsite.
See the schedule Bring it onsite