ESA Conducting Town Hall Consultations on Risk-Based Oversight

Sept 10, 2018

Starting in October, Ontario’s Electrical Safety Authority is conducting a second series of consultations across the province with licensed electrical contractors about moving to a risk-based approach (Risk-based Oversight or “RBO”) for electrical wiring by 2020.

Risk-based oversight means that ESA will use risk criteria to determine what wiring work requires a site visit. Permits will have a risk level assigned to it based on

• who does the installation work
• what the installation is
• where the installation is

All high risk work must be inspected, and medium and low risk work will be subject to selective inspection. That is, for every two, three, five, or ten installations, one will have a physical site visit by an inspector, but this ratio is still to be determined.

Why ESA is moving to a risk based approach

ESA believes selective inspection and a risk based approach can help address your scheduling concerns as it creates opportunities for ESA to keep you better informed as to when an inspector will or won’t be coming to visit a site. This also means ESA will be able to focus on the work that poses the greatest safety risk, including the investigation of work done by unlicensed contractors.

Register here to attend one of ESA’s town hall meetings: https://www.esasafe.com/about-esa/stakeholder-engagement/rbo-fall2018