The utilization of high-voltage laboratories plays a foundational role in the educational curriculum of electrical engineering students, as well as in the domain of power equipment inspection, testing, and research. Their primary mission is to verify insulation performance and ensure operational reliability. These efforts have had a substantial impact on the development of China’s electrical industry and have served to reinforce the security and stability of critical power grid infrastructure. However, such laboratories frequently encounter substantial safety management challenges, including fragmented risk identification processes, inadequate evaluation of protective measures’ effectiveness, and an absence of systematic root cause analysis following incidents. These deficiencies impede the implementation of proactive safety enhancements and have the potential to result in severe accidents. Moreover, these devices have the potential to compromise the safety of high-voltage experiments. To address these issues, the present paper proposes an integrated safety management framework combining the job hazard analysis (JHA), layer of protection analysis (LOPA), and fault tree analysis (FTA) methods for high-voltage laboratories. This framework is designed to facilitate a comprehensive risk assessment across the entire testing project lifecycle, enhancing the overall safety standards of the laboratories and promoting instructional safety during high-voltage experiments.

The proposed method utilizes JHA to deconstruct high-voltage testing procedures into sequential steps, enabling the systematic identification of potential hazard factors. Tasks such as energizing equipment or measuring breakdown voltages are analyzed for risks like electric shock, arc flashes, and mechanical failures. Subsequently, the LOPA method is employed to conduct a semi-quantitative assessment of the effectiveness of existing safety protection measures. This approach enables the precise identification of vulnerabilities in the protective layers. For critical risks that have been identified, the FTA method is employed to conduct a comprehensive root cause analysis, investigating the underlying causes of potential safety incidents. Consequently, a closed-loop management process has been established for the safety management of high-voltage laboratory and experimental teaching settings. This process integrates comprehensive risk identification, quantitative assessment, and root cause analysis.

An application analysis of the JHA-LOPA-FTA method was conducted, using the air gap breakdown characteristic test as an example. The identification of potential risks and consequences across seven key stages resulted in the proposal of corresponding protective measures. A high-risk scenario, in which personnel erroneously believe the equipment to be non-energized, was assessed through the implementation of an independent protection layer evaluation. The results of the study indicated that the scenario’s frequency of occurrence far exceeded the acceptable risk level. This finding led to the recommendation of the addition of new layers of protection. Additionally, the FTA was utilized to identify the underlying causes of the observed events. The amalgamation of these analyses offers a comprehensive reference framework for the prevention and control of safety risks in this experiment.

The integrated JHA-LOPA-FTA framework exemplifies a structured and proactive approach to safety management in high-voltage laboratories and the experimental pedagogy of electrical engineering. The case study corroborates the practicality of the system in reducing incident frequency and enhancing operational reliability. This implementation has identified over 230 potential risk points across 18 experimental projects, and more than 30 independent protection layers have been added to address these risks, which have effectively reduced the human error probability. The findings indicate that this methodology effectively enhances the safety management level of high-voltage laboratories. The findings can be integrated into the laboratory’s safety protocols, training programs, and experimental teaching systems to foster a sustained culture of safety.