Safety Signage for Electric and Telecom Utilities
This is the industry we came from.
Before CGAP Safety made signs, the founder spent more than a decade in telecom outside plant and fiber construction: wire technician, project manager on rural broadband builds, field services manager running crews across the eastern United States. Utility vaults, duct bank routes, substation fences, pole lines, pedestals, and the moment a backhoe operator decides whether to call 811. Most of the signs in this category exist because of a specific site where the right sign would have helped and did not exist.
Call 811 and buried utility signs, high voltage, arc flash, and vault and confined space.
What utility sites actually have to post
Substations and switchyards. High voltage keep-out at the fence, arc flash field marking on switchgear under NFPA 70E and NEC 110.16, no-conductive-equipment warnings in powerline corridors, and restricted access at every gate. The fence sign is the one the public reads. The arc flash label is the one your own crew reads. Guide: arc flash field marking
Buried plant. Fiber duct banks, buried electric feeders, telecom cable routes, street light circuits, and traffic signal cable. None of these carry the federal marker mandate that pipelines do, and all of them are where the expensive strikes happen, because a backhoe through a fiber route takes down service for thousands of customers with no explosion to warn anyone. Permanent markers at route crossings, vault lids, pull boxes, and pedestals are how the contractor who never called 811 finds out. Guide: Call 811, the color code, the tolerance zone
Vaults, manholes, and cable vaults. Permit-required confined spaces under 1910.146, and the standard requires posting. Cable vaults add electrocution, oxygen deficiency, and corrosive battery electrolyte to the list. Guide: confined space posting
Pad-mount transformers and pedestals. Energized equipment sitting in plain sight on facility grounds, in parking lots, and along right-of-ways. Posting at the enclosure is what separates a curious kid from a fatality.
Battery rooms and backup power. Telecom battery plants run lead-acid with hydrogen off-gassing and sulfuric acid, and increasingly lithium-ion with thermal runaway. The two need different signage and different emergency responses. Guide: battery and energy storage signage
Towers, monopoles, and RF. Fall hazard at monopole access hatches, RF exposure at antenna sites and rooftops, and the shock hazard at the base plate. The rooftop HVAC contractor was never at your safety meeting. The sign is the briefing.
Why we mark what nobody requires
Pipeline operators have to post line markers under PHMSA rules. Fiber and electric utilities do not, and that gap is exactly where damage concentrates. We built the Call 811 line for utilities that decided not to wait for a mandate: one strike costs more than every marker on the route.
How utilities and contractors buy from us
Purchase orders, net terms, tax-exempt for co-ops and municipal utilities, W-9 on request, written quotes, and 24-hour dispatch. Ten or more signs take 10% off automatically. If your route needs a marker we do not make, describe it. Custom is normal here. Get in touch.
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