Energized Electrical Work Permit Generator
Fill it in, generate it, print it. The permit is not paperwork that authorizes danger — it is the twenty minutes that usually ends with someone deciding to de-energize after all.
Dan Mercer, CSP — 35+ years EHS experience, trainer to Fortune 500 industrial and tech clients.
01What a permit is actually for
An energized electrical work permit is not paperwork that authorizes danger. It is a forcing function. It makes someone write down, in advance and in their own name, why this work cannot be done de-energized — and it makes a second person with authority sign that they agree.
That is the entire mechanism. Most of the value is extracted before anyone picks up a tool, in the twenty minutes it takes to fill it out honestly. The plants where energized work goes wrong are almost never the plants with a rigorous permit. They are the plants where the permit is signed in the truck on the way to the job, or where nobody signs one because troubleshooting got quietly reclassified as something other than energized work.
Troubleshooting, voltage testing, and thermography on exposed energized parts are energized work. The 2027 edition carves out exactly four situations where a qualified person can skip the permit — and only the permit: testing, troubleshooting, and voltage measuring; thermography, ultrasound, or visual inspection where nobody crosses the restricted approach boundary; walking through to get somewhere else, with no electrical work and no boundary crossing; and housekeeping or other non-electrical tasks done outside the restricted approach boundary. That list is in 130.3(C), and it is shorter than most programs assume. An exemption removes the paperwork, not the risk. The shock and arc flash risk assessments still happen, and the PPE still goes on.
Build an energized electrical work permit
1 · Job identification
2 · Justification for energized work
De-energizing introduces additional or increased hazards, or is infeasible due to equipment design or operational limitations. Production schedule, customer preference, inconvenience, and cost are not infeasibility. If you cannot honestly select one of the two below, the answer to this job is to de-energize it.
Write this as if it will be read aloud in a deposition. It may be.
3 · Shock risk assessment
4 · Arc flash risk assessment
If the only honest answer is “nobody knows,” stop. That is the finding, and it is bigger than this job.
5 · Job safety plan & briefing
02Nothing you type here leaves your browser
This tool runs entirely in your browser. No field is transmitted, stored, or logged anywhere. Generate the permit, print it or save it as a PDF, and it exists only on your machine and in your hand.
If you would rather have an editable Word version to standardize across a site, the same permit is in the free template pack — along with the pre-job briefing card, the host/contractor information exchange, and the qualification matrix.
The energized work permit in Word, the job safety plan pocket card, the host/contractor information exchange form, and the qualification matrix and 50-item ESP audit checklist in Excel. Free.
Live NFPA 70E classes covering justification, risk assessment, and the permit process. Find training in your state.
On-site and virtual NFPA 70E training taught by the author of this tool.