I took a late night call last year and I had to turn the disconnect off. The coil was open on the 1MA contactor. I turned off the disconnect and began to loosen the contactor so I could access the top better when something didn't seem right, I don't know if it was someone watching out for me or what. So I test and verified with my meter. I still had 480 present. Turns out they changed out the disconnect and put a new panel in for that car only next to the big panel that had the other elevators in it. Nothing was labeled the new disconnect and the old one still had a big 8 on it. Things could have got nasty fast. After that I always t/v and pound it into my apprentice's head. Compliancy kills.
Just on this sbm, this is just criminal by the electricians not marking any new switch or even the old switch. I'm not even sure why you would replace a new switch in a differing place. However in our state(Victoria) you are NOT allowed to work live anymore(unless fault finding and under special circumstances) and you must test and tag everything you work on. So in this instance, if you had got a zap you would still be in breach of your own duty of care as you didn't verify that it was dead. Its a good idea that you drum this in to your workers as it takes 2 seconds. I had a similar instance where I got a 3 phase 415v belt across my hand working on a bmu on a roof. I had recommended all 3 ph plugs get replaced and I had been doing so, testing everyone as I go, but I got lazy and since everyone had been dead, I didn't test the 5th one in line. Wow god it hurt across the hand. It turned out that half of the plugs were on 1 circuit and the other half on another circuit that no one knew about. Test and tag gents. It can save you some pain!!!
