The Lads On Site Will Sort It Out!! 

The way to fix this is to have a route for people like you on the ground to report back to the designers about problems like this.

Smaller cheaper components all made overseas with no thought for maintenance down the road. Also the size of switch rooms is getting smaller and more cramped. Bad to work in when installing and potentially lethal if you’re in their and something goes wrong.

As a panel assembler and industrial electrician these points are 100% true. Most of panel designers don’t know how to design and problem is they don’t have much practical experience in fields. Specially in cable sizes and how hard it is to handle. Another problem is small distance between breaker and gland plate. They are trying to minimize cost with making small panel. Hats off to you man for talk about those things 💯👏

mate you think electrical is bad take a look at mechanical services. all the time i am going out to look at systems that don't work properly and never will because the designers have no experience of the real world. they always blame the site guys for installing something 'wrong' when it's clearly bad design.

Electrical design/engineering at university for 3 years, working on site in the trade for 0 days.

Another great video Tony. This is a typical example of Designers not actually using their own product after it is made and learning from it. If the designers speak to the installer they can find better ways to design and install the kit giving a far superior product and a smoother and quicker install. In turn this will be a win win for both parties. Maybe the designer of this panel should watch your video and learn something from it?

Yes - the designers are suitably qualified to design the panels, MCCB's etc etc., however, most of them lack any practical installation experience therefore problems like you have encountered here with the multiple supply cables occur.

When the focus is on minimizing costs on the product, what ever profit you gained by reducing the quality is lost when us electricians install it 😂

Full disclosure, i am a panel builder and I'm can be almost certain the panel builder was not told it was a parrellel feed, engineers drastically oversize cable regardless of voltage drop, so say thats a 400A MCCB, that looks like 2 x185sq. Depending on run it could be oversized be 50-100%. The panel builder has to size the CT for the breaker because the more its oversized itbis proportionally less accurate and it would need at least a 800A CT to allow those cables through. Bring on the Rogoski coils

I came across this years ago the designer attended university better education than me😮 I look at drawings and the wall I was installing 200x200 trunking on had a RSJ in my way, I asked how do you want me to proceed the answer I got back was go through the steel 😂 the trunking was just a bit smaller then the steel. I said no way it will have to be set around it. your cable calcs will have to be redone as a lot of cables were in that trunking. Still never came to site, revised drawing with a set in it and bigger trunking required🤯

As an engineer, being a marine officer before, who came from a position of AB and before that being electrical technician ashore, I exactly understand this matter. It is designing theoretically according to specs, so it appears to be fitting and meets the requirements, but in reality it is as you mention: "A pain in the buttock". It is the result of an engineer who lacks the field experience of installing the designed installation. Lack of practical field experience is what causes this kind of challenges for the technician who is actually realising the design. If the designer never has worked in the field, he could never know how things are in the real, material world. I once sailed with a master who clearly made a difference between officers who came just out of marine college and officers who came out of marine college, ascending from an operational position. He recogmnised me as "one from affore the mast", meaning someone who understood the practice of working on deck as an AB and having ascended from there to an officers position. What I am trying to say is that in hiearchy of controls it only works out good with full understanding of operations at the lower levels. For this reason all managers and engineers should be aware of what is going on at the operational level of what they are controlling or designing for.

Feel your pain mate, earth bar at the back of the cableway as well - great fun 🤦‍♂

Designer dont have had on trade experience. I alway said cad designers, architects should do a year min on the tool to experience stuff like this

I am 43 years old, and currently a year two college student in Electrical Engineering. I have been an electrician for like 6 years now. I feel your pain, but it can be worse. I am in Romania, I work here, I study here. In college, we study many theoretical things about electrical systems, and we are trained in technical labs for a lot of hours, but field electrical work is just inexistent in cases like mine (I intend to do civil work, but the only college I can attend right now because of my age is a Maritime Engineering one). This causes an influx of designers with no practical knowledge about a joiner's or electrician's (industrial or civil) work-related issues. From what I see here, and from what I've seen from big brands like Schneider or Schrack in some of their products (fortunately not in that many) it's a common problem nowadays. They hire guys who put a lot of hours in AutoCAD, but zero hours in the field.

I don't know the regulations in britan, but here in germany, the direction the doors open depends on where the room exit is, because in case of an emergency, if you and your 50 friends need to evacuate out of the electrical room, the panel doors need to close in the direction of the door. Also, the designers are usually aware that the design is shit, but there is usually too much work and too little time to fix it. I worked with a guy who designed a panel, where you had 300 mm for 12 300mm² single core conductors, and he knew it was shit, but fixing it in design would cost 8 h, letting the lads on site sort it out would take 4 h, so management decidet it was fine

They could just have easy remove doors with pull rod hinges like in datacentres, a few extra bucks would go a long way for installers.

To be fair to the panel designers they needed to allow enough distance from the hinge side to the mccb bar otherwise the bar won't sit into the isolation handle correctly. However I completely agree it's awkward for the installation process.

It will be so the panel looks more pleasing on the eye. With regards the CT's why could'nt they have allowed for bolt on terminals in the cable ways and the tri or bi rated cables to the switch? Easier for you to lug into as if fitted vertically your coming straight down onto them and not having to bend 90°. And the panel designer can still use his cheaper CT's to still win the job 😮. Then single Tri rated would go through the CT easier. But then that would be part of the panel build and you wouldn't need to mess with it even.

I do a lot of these panels and like someone mentioned below, the standards and design has dropped rapid. Less space to work with and as for the bolt problem, i always carry selection of longer bolts but why should i ? Great vid mate, onwards and upwards .

You can get the big CT that they can all pass through. But like you say lack of communication between the design teams and the manufacturer and hay presto bullshit to deal with on site.

Everything is done on a computer nowadays, think it falls short there, and probably most engineers don’t have the site experience knowledge you have sir

I say all designers should spend at least 1-2 years onsite with the engineers installing the equipment they wish to design!

Another great watch - moaning and all - keep it up, and hopefully the powers that be will take heed😀

The main problem these days with design is that designers rely too heavily on automated software to do it all for them. As long as there are no red exclamation marks on the circuit design, theyre happy. We need to go back to basics and get that grey matter working again. Common sense should always apply but is sorely lacking when it comes to design.

Example of "Copy and Paste" design.

Tony your so right i would say 15 years more like panel designers have not got a clue

Good job getting over that, but what a faff!!

The cheapest bid and make always wins

This is not a new problem , it has been going on for many , many years ! They believe they're achieving great things by squeezing as many things as possible into as smaller space as possible !

In Portugal its the same😢

Don't worry Tony will sort it out on site.

The helmet is actually a good thing, one of my coworkers put a 1/2kg piece of plastic on top of a equipment I was working on. I caught it with my eyebrow before it hit the floor, it’s taken 3-4 days to not feel slightly drunk all day… On the points of builders of cabinets/panels. The best decision I’ve made at the company I’m working at is to build all our control cabinets myself

Definitely agree on the door hinge side for the stack of breakers that are in the middle of the cell, however on the cell you were terminating the cables in, the breaker is real close to the left side. While not a deal breaker, this often results in the handle on the door binding on the shaft when you open/close the cell if the hinges were on the left, as instead of the shaft mating when the door is almost perpendicular to the shaft, it does it at a sharper angle. If you get them too close you'll never get the cell open/closed right. Either you move the breaker closer to the middle of the cell and reduce your room for terminating cables, or just take the door off.

11:55 😂😂😂

😢You're getting like an old woman with the moaning 🧓😝 A poor design is if the cables didn't fit through the CT holes, it all came together and fitted in the end 😁😅 But I agree, designers just see a CAD line or a dimension on their computer screen, they don't know the real world intricacies and difficulties of implementing what they specify. They just spec a 120mm cable, but dont realise how hard it is to bend and (wo)manhandle it.

It's the whole industry, standards have fell so far it's frightening. I started noticing it maybe 15 years ago, old guys where retiring and being replaced by kids who didn't give a fuck. Now them kids are trying up new kids who care even less.

I agree with the design aspect. And I too have to moan at our project managers when they say how long it should take to make off a panel, not knowing how much of a pig some of them are to work on.

Take care, thanks for sharing this hard puzzle.

Well done considering the parameters you were working against. Totally agree these people will be on good money and should be held accountable.

And you did sort it out, so that reinforces their position. Lose-lose situation man

I am the business