Electricity Today T&D Magazine

With the advent of our modern health, safety and environmental systems (HSE), the requirement to produce more documents is relentless. No one feels this pressure more than our front line supervision; those individuals, who are leading our crews out in the field. Not only are they tasked with completing some of the most dangerous work in the world, but they have to be spot on when documenting their production, quality control, cost effectiveness and HSE actions. Our corporate management systems ask them to track every step they take. No step can be left to chance, we demand this documentation. As...

Line-construction contractors can do their best to train the management, offer safety training and equipment and trust the foremen who are appointed to a job, but it is an inherently dangerous business. Despite all the safeguards, some new linemen say this is what some foremen tell them about safety procedures: “That’s the way you may have learned it in training, but this is how it’s done on the job...”
Training is designed to keep linemen safe. But is that training and equipment being put to proper use? The answer varies depending on the job and the foreman—more so than the...