How Panduit Resolved a Dangerous Electrical Contradiction

Alan Bond on how VeriSafe helped turn a live-test requirement into a safer, faster, more reliable process.

For years, one part of electrical safety made almost no sense at all. To prove a panel was safe, a worker first had to enter a potentially hazardous space and test it live. The process was accepted. It was required. It was also, as Panduit Senior Global Product Manager Alan Bond sees it, a contradiction hiding in plain sight.

That contradiction led Panduit to develop VeriSafe™, an absence-of-voltage tester designed to automate a step that had long depended on direct exposure, manual judgment, and time.

The result was more than a safety improvement. It changed the pace and consistency of the work itself. A process that once took about 20 minutes could now return a result in about 10 seconds. In a market dealing with electrification and tighter labor pools, that shift has become about much more than compliance.

Q: When you consider what led to VeriSafe, what problem was Panduit really trying to solve?

Alan Bond: Traditional Live-Dead-Live testing means intentionally interacting with something you already suspect could be dangerous, just to prove it’s not.

The process without VeriSafe, therefore, is a bit of a paradox: To verify an electrical panel is de-energized and safe, you must open the panel and expose yourself to live conductors first.

It's like checking for a gas leak by striking a match in a dark room. Would that be fine if you were wearing a fireproof suit? Probably not. You're still doing the one thing you shouldn't do around a possible leak.

Q: What made that process so hard to trust from one person to the next?

Alan Bond: Before VeriSafe, you had to rely on a person to go in with a handheld meter, take readings, and then interpret what they were seeing. The standard told you what steps to follow, but it didn’t always remove the ambiguity from the result. One person may read it one way. Another person may read it another way. We wanted to increase the level of certainty in the outcome of the process.

Q: This wasn't just a better version of an existing device. It sounds like you were creating an entirely new category?

Alan Bond: Yes! It wasn’t just, “Let’s build a better widget and launch it.” There was a lot more integration across standards bodies, experts, and industries that all fed into what this product really needed to be.

VeriSafe Changed the Math From Minutes to Seconds

Panduit turned a manual verification process that could take up to 20 minutes into a push-button check that returns a result in about 10 seconds.

Q: The time-saving claim is striking. What does that change look like in practice?

Alan Bond: The previous method (doing it by hand) takes roughly 20 minutes. It could be longer. It could be shorter. But we typically land on 20 minutes. But by using VeriSafe, it’s down to 10 seconds. You push the button, let the device do all those steps normally done by hand, and then it gives you the result.

Q: Why does that time difference matter beyond convenience?

Alan Bond: Safety is hard to quantify financially. Labor savings are not. If you can take a process that used to tie up a qualified electrician for 20 minutes and reduce it to 10 seconds, that has value right away. It also helps the process actually get followed, because you’ve removed a lot of the delay and friction around it.

Q: Trust seems central here. How did Panduit think about that in the design?

Alan Bond: If we’re adding in a device that a user has to trust, you have to have it designed so the user can trust the device’s output. VeriSafe can verify that it is still terminated to the conductors it was supposed to be terminated to. It also does an internal diagnostic check of the system itself. We wanted to increase the level of certainty of the outcome of the process.

Q: Why is that such a meaningful shift?

Alan Bond: In the old process, you needed a qualified electrician to go into the panel and verify absence of voltage manually. But with VeriSafe, that verification step can be done much faster and without that same direct exposure during testing, which opens the process up to other trained personnel, depending on the site and procedure. It gives companies more flexibility in how they staff the work.

Q: Why does that matter more now?

Alan Bond: Electrification is moving faster than the skilled labor force can keep up. Companies are asking less experienced workers to interact with more devices. VeriSafe automates the process and enables non-electricians to accomplish this step in a much shorter time. This eliminates mistakes and removes incentives to just skip the process.

Q: What else started to change once customers used it that way?

Alan Bond: You start to see benefits in consistency and visibility. If you add the network module, now you’ve got remote monitoring and indication. A supervisor can know what’s happening without having to be standing right there at the panel. So it becomes more than a safety device. It becomes part of how you manage the work.

Standards Turned an Innovation Into a Trusted Category

Panduit worked across product standards, safety guidance, and industry experts to help make VeriSafe a device customers could trust, adopt, and repeat with confidence.

Q: VeriSafe wasn’t just a hardware problem to solve. What did it take to make the category real?

Alan Bond: There was a lot more integration across different industries and standards bodies that all fed into what this product really needed to be. It wasn’t going to be just “let’s build a better widget, launch it to market, and see if anybody buys it.”

Q: What did those standards discussions actually change?

Alan Bond: Part of that collaboration with industry standards and experts in the field was taking a process that had a lot of subjectivity and defining it better. For example, the old process could leave people interpreting readings differently. The product standard, in contrast, established a clearer threshold for what de-energized means in this context.

Q: Why did that matter for adoption?

Alan Bond: Because people had to trust it. Several standards had to be modified and created across UL, NFPA, and IEEE [Underwriters Laboratories, National Fire Protection Association, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers], and that involved more than just Panduit. It took a lot of collaboration. If you want the market to use something like this, it can’t just be a good idea; it has to be something people understand and believe in.

Continuous Innovation Means Finding New Value From the Same Solution

Panduit keeps extending VeriSafe into new voltages, environments, and use cases, proving that innovation can keep creating value long after launch.

Q: Where have you seen the story expand beyond the original vision?

Alan Bond: VeriSafe was originally designed for industrial manufacturing facilities, and, for the first six or seven years, that’s who was adopting it. Then data centers started popping up a bit. And now you see other industries too. EV [electric vehicle] chargers, car washes, logistics sites—these are all places where electricity is still electricity, and someone still needs to know it’s safe before they go in.

Q: How did the product itself evolve with those new use cases?

Alan Bond: The original device covered a certain range and a certain kind of application. VeriSafe 1kV opened that up. Now you’ve got higher voltage capability, single-phase, DC applications. That lets us address more of the places where this same problem exists.

Q: What does that say about how Panduit innovates?

Alan Bond: It says the work doesn’t stop when the first version launches. You solve one problem, then you find the next version of it. It’s grown already in the decade that it’s been out. I could see us expanding to higher voltages, more unique solutions, and solving for additional niche industries.

Learn more about VeriSafe: Panduit VeriSafe Absence of Voltage Testers