Dominion Virginia Power's Lineman Training Program trains more than 70 linemen each year. Some students in the training classes are brand new to the field, never having climbed a pole, while others have more than 10 to 20 years of experience as groundmen. Training such a diverse group is a challenge.

Today's Line Workers Are Different

Those who are entering the workforce today come with different skills and are motivated by different things than previous generations. They are used to computers and instant information. They don't like being asked to imagine what could happen. If a short circuit was created, they want to see it and experience it.

And because they were brought up using highly visual video games that can simulate almost anything, they think that the things they are learning should be animated, so they can see what exactly is happening.

Dominion Virginia Power is one of the nation's 10 largest investor-owned electric utilities. It delivers power to more than 2 million homes and businesses in Virginia and North Carolina. At its Delivery Safety and Training Center in Chester, Virginia, it has five full-time safety and performance specialists on staff dedicated to training our linemen. The 60-acre training facility includes underground and overhead pole work and transmission towers. Dominion has four classrooms, one of which doubles as a transformer training room.

Connection Transformers

Generation Xers, as today's new employees are called, want real experiences and instant feedback. In an effort to make its training exercises more realistic for these employees, Dominion actually energizes some of the equipment in its training center at very low voltages. For example, we added a low-voltage current to its transformers in its single-phase and three-phase training equipment. The low current simulation tool makes our transformer hookups and secondary connections training more realistic.

These transformers are set for 10-to-1 ratios, so the 120-V input is converted, making the low-side output 6 V phase-to-ground and 12 V phase-to-phase. At these voltage levels, which are not dangerous, an indicator reacts immediately and provides feedback on whether the trainees have performed a task correctly or not. The rotation meters and voltmeters also have to be recalibrated to work with the low voltage to make it as realistic as possible.

Prior to installing the low voltage and indicator lights, trainees could only perform the work pretending that it was hot. An instructor would have to be watching attentively to make sure the trainee was doing the hookup correctly. If the instructor took his or her eyes off trainees for a second and missed them creating a short circuit, the instructor would never know they did something incorrectly. Adding the low-voltage element to the training module gives them a more realistic and safe environment to learn transformer connections, and they have immediate feedback if they did it incorrectly.

Showing You Care

The new generation of linemen also needs to feel valued and important. The climbing school is a good way for Dominion to give them this attention. The utility has been using a fall-arrest system in its climbing sessions for several years. And during the last startup session, it also began requiring its trainees to wear hockey helmets with face shields during the first few weeks. During a cutout, when the fall-arrest system catches, the climber is often thrown against the wood pole, which can do major damage to exposed skin. Wearing the added helmet and face protection prevents the climber's face from hitting the poles.

Instructors say the helmets were a success and the trainees readily accepted wearing them once they were acclimated to the extra protective gear. Dominion is also in the process of evaluating arm protection to be used during the first few weeks of climbing training to prevent cuts and splinters.

The utility has seen very positive results from the training modules it has redesigned. The trainees like the more realistic exercises and seem to have a greater sense of accomplishment when they finish. We also know this new generation of linemen is our future workforce. The biggest drawback is finding time to update more of our exercises to keep up with the demand, but it will be worth it.

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Steve Crone is a safety and performance specialist at Dominion Virginia Power, where he has worked for 25 years. He is based at the Delivery, Safety and Training Center in Chester, Virginia. Steven_A_Crone@dom.com