NFPA 70E in Ohio

Ohio's compliance picture is widely misdescribed — including, until recently, on pages like this one. Here is what's actually true, why the PERRP distinction matters, and how the largest grid buildout in state history is changing the risk profile.

01Getting Ohio's jurisdiction right

You will find sources — including safety-industry sources — describing Ohio as having a "public-employee-only state plan." That is wrong, and it matters, because it changes what a public employer thinks it owes.

OSHA's own state plans page states it directly: Ohio is not an OSHA-approved state plan, and is under federal OSHA jurisdiction covering most private-sector workers; state and local government workers are not covered by federal OSHA. The seven public-employee-only plans are Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ohio isn't among them.

What Ohio has instead is PERRP — the Public Employment Risk Reduction Program, a purely state-law construct under ORC Chapter 4167, created in 1992 and housed in the Bureau of Workers' Compensation's Division of Safety & Hygiene since 2005. Ohio HB 308 incorporated the federal standards (29 CFR 1910 and 1926) by reference, so public employees do get the substance of 1910.147, 1910.331–.335, and 1910.269 — but through state law, enforced by a state agency, entirely outside OSHA's approved-plan system.

PERRP's mechanics differ: the BWC superintendent issues written citations by certified mail describing the violation with particularity, plus abatement orders and imminent-danger orders. NEEDS SME REVIEW whether PERRP assesses monetary penalties is not confirmed from a primary source — do not state "no fines" without verification.

The practical picture on an Ohio jobsite: a municipal utility, county, school district, or city electrical crew answers to PERRP under ORC 4167. A private contractor working alongside them on the same substation answers to federal OSHA out of Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo, or Cincinnati. Two agencies, one job site, two bodies of procedure — and only one of them publishes the kind of press-released citations that make it into industry newsletters.

02The buildout that's changing Ohio's electrical risk profile

I'd argue central Ohio is currently the most consequential electrical construction environment in the country, and most Ohio safety programs haven't caught up to it.

The scale: Intel's New Albany fab site (roughly $20–28B, construction pace slowed); AWS at $3.5B for a New Albany expansion spanning five buildings and about 1.25M sq ft of technical space; Google at $1.7B across New Albany, Columbus, and Lancaster; Microsoft at $420M in New Albany; and Meta's gigawatt-scale "Prometheus" AI cluster.

Feeding it required a transmission response of matching scale. AEP, FirstEnergy, and Evergy committed roughly $1.2 billion for about 300 miles of new 765-kV transmission, approved by the PJM Board in February 2026.

What that means for electrical safety in Ohio, concretely:

• 765 kV is a different world. Approach distances, induced voltage on parallel de-energized circuits, and step-and-touch potential at these levels are not intuitive extensions of distribution practice. Crews moving up from 138 kV work need genuine retraining, not a briefing.
• Commissioning seams multiply. Every data hall energization is a handoff from 1926 construction rules to 1910 general industry rules, with dozens of contractors on site and progressively energized switchgear. This is the exact seam where the Tesla Austin fatality happened — see the data center guide and the Texas case detail.
• Uptime culture arrives with the tenants. Once these facilities are operating, "we can't take an outage" becomes the standing argument against de-energization. The infeasibility determination is a technical finding, not a business preference — and concurrent-maintainability designs usually make de-energization more achievable, not less.
• The workforce is being assembled fast. Rapid scaling means crews with less shared history and more contractor layering — which is where Article 110's host/contract employer information exchange stops being paperwork and starts being the load-bearing control.

03Ohio enforcement: three cases worth briefing

An older Ohio case still worth knowing: in 2015, OSHA cited Metal Shredders Inc. of Miamisburg with willful and serious violations in the electrocution death of a welder cutting metal off an industrial transformer substation, having failed to protect him from an energized line.

NEEDS SME REVIEW no cited 2020–2026 Ohio utility (AEP, FirstEnergy, Duke Ohio) or steel (Cleveland-Cliffs) electrical enforcement action was located in this research pass. Do not assert one.

NEEDS SME REVIEW Ohio's electricity-exposure fatality subtotal is suppressed in the BLS state release; Ohio BWC also publishes CFOI data and may be a better source for a state figure.

04Licensing: contractors at the state level, electricians at the city level

Ohio splits licensing in a way that surprises people:

OCILB continuing education runs 10 hours annually, reduced to 8 for contractors in the Compliant Contractor Program, with approved topics including NEC code updates, safety standards, and Ohio law changes.

Note the shape of that curriculum: it's oriented toward installation code. NEEDS SME REVIEW no source confirms NFPA 70E work practices are a required CE topic — verify before publishing as a claim. The compliance gap this creates is the important part: OSHA's 1910.332–.335 requires documented work-practice training, and NEC-focused continuing education does not satisfy it. For an Ohio employer, the qualification obligation sits with you regardless of what your electricians' CE transcripts say.

05Where Ohio sits on NEC adoption

Ohio adopted the 2023 NEC (NFPA 70), effective March 1, 2024, across both the Ohio Building Code track and the Residential Code of Ohio, with the 2021 I-Codes and Ohio amendments effective the same date. That puts Ohio ahead of several larger states — Florida is on the 2020 NEC and Chicago is still on 2017. NEEDS SME REVIEW 2026 NEC adoption status in Ohio is unconfirmed.

06Ohio sectors

• Data centers and semiconductor fab — the defining growth story; covered above
• Automotive and parts manufacturing — confirmed in the enforcement record via General Aluminum and Park-Ohio
• Foundry and primary metals — high-energy electrical environments with aging infrastructure
• Food processing — New Horizons Baking, cited above
• Utilities and the transmission buildout — AEP, FirstEnergy; see the utilities guide for the 1910.269 / 70E boundary problem
• Public sector — municipalities, counties, school districts operating under PERRP rather than OSHA

07Ohio compliance checklist

• Know which regime covers each of your Ohio workforces — PERRP under ORC 4167, or federal OSHA
• Public employers: PERRP incorporates the federal standards by reference, so build to 1910.331–.335 and 1910.269 regardless of the enforcement difference
• Audit the "routine task" list — fuse replacement, thermography, panel inspection — against the Willard arc blast case
• Multi-site manufacturers: harmonize programs across plants before a citation at one becomes a repeat at another
• Separate OCILB contractor licensure and municipal journeyman licenses from documented 70E qualification
• For data center and fab construction: write energization milestones into the safety plan, not just the schedule
• For crews moving into 765-kV work: treat it as new qualification, not an extension of existing training
• Model the 2027 additional-person requirement against lean plant night shifts