It is interesting to hear what pole-line construction foremen have to say about the challenges of their job. Considering their responsibilities and work environment, most of them have a headache or two to talk about.

Installing Poles Is the Easy Part

Traffic has to be a pole-line worker's biggest headache. Dennis Godfrey of Capital Electric Construction Co. (Kansas City, Missouri) said that dealing with traffic on a recent job for Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L) was like “working in a kennel full of barking dogs.” Drivers sneak up behind you and honk their horn; they yell at you, he recalled.

Capital Electric was upgrading a 3-mile stretch of KCP&L's pole line from a Class 3 to a Class 1 for additional loading. Godfrey served as foreman on the job to change out 28 poles in north Kansas City. The two-lane county road was not exactly in a school zone, but school buses backed up traffic every morning and afternoon. “Replacing poles is a pretty routine job, but with the traffic, just trying to dig a hole or get a lineman up in a bucket made it tough going,” Godfrey noted.

Just Trying to Do Your Job

Danny Clark, a line superintendent of overhead line construction for Pike Electric (Mount Airy, North Carolina) shares the same frustration. While relocating a line in Cumming, Georgia, for a road-widening project, the in-town traffic was overwhelming. Clark's seven-man crew had been working together for years, but because of the amount of traffic on this project there were days when it felt like the crew was falling apart. They couldn't get anything done because of the commuters, shoppers and service trucks. Bucket trucks had to block traffic along the road, and sometimes the city wouldn't let them close a lane. The public just hammered the flaggers. Clark said, “You're trying to improve the community and do everything you can to safely complete your job while the traffic is yelling at you to get out of the way. It was like someone kicking dirt in your face.”

You Want This Done When?

Russell James, a line crew foreman for Xcel Energy (Minneapolis, Minnesota) shared with me a different kind of frustration — when someone wants a job done “yesterday.” Case in point, a 12-mile section of 34-kV line from Dalhart to Hartley, Texas, had to be moved because of road construction — with a deadline of two weeks. This was a pretty tall order, but the state said the line had to be moved. James was in charge of the 10 three-man crews who built the new pole line and made the conductor transfer. Again, a lot of pressure, but the job was safely completed in 11 days, including the removal of the old poles.

Beefing Up the System

Almost every electric utility has a “boom town” — a section of the territory where population growth is off the chart. For Ameren, it is Wentzville, Missouri, a western suburb of St. Louis. Ameren's Joe Prenger told me that about all his three-man crew does is install new poles. Prenger says the new business and residential growth in the area has created a constant demand for “beefing up the system.” Like Godfrey's job in Kansas City, much of the work load is pole replacement, but Ameren crews are also building some new distribution lines to subdivisions that are popping up everywhere.

So what keeps these pole-line construction foremen and a 1000 just like them going? Prenger put his finger on it when he used the phrase, “Get'r Done.” I often hear this when I talk to line foremen or superintendents. Regardless of the headaches, line foremen have an inner drive to just get'r done.