Carrying the message of safety, reliability and quality of service to linemen and other utility employees in South America, PSEG Global managers have saved lives at their South American utilities, Luz del Sur and Chilquinta Energia.

Now retired, Bill Meekings is one of the company's “missionaries for safety.” He had already celebrated 40 years at Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG; Newark, New Jersey, U.S.) when he was called to South America to investigate a lineman's death. During his investigation, Meekings found that safety practices at the utility were lacking.

Priorities

PSEG Global, together with its partner Sempra Energy International (San Diego, California, U.S.), had acquired distribution companies in Chile and Peru in the 1990s when many South American countries deregulated their energy industries. The company now serves more than 2.6 million electric distribution customers in South America. Proud of its health and safety practices, PSEG Global found that its South American holdings didn't focus as much on safety, said Meekings, who later transferred to PSEG Global and became manager of distribution methods.

“They were having fatalities down there,” Meekings said. “They're very new to live-line work in South America. They were losing people, not only in line work but in other work like switching and contact work, people working in low-voltage, medium-tension. They were losing a person every 18 months.”

Prior to the arrival of Meekings and his crew, the crews at Luz del Sur and Chilquinta Energia, a distribution company in Chile that PSEG Global acquired and that Sempra operates, followed safety procedures on a “hit-and-miss” basis, Meekings said.

PSEG Global faced a challenge. It had to evaluate what these linemen were doing wrong and instill a new philosophy: Personal safety is the top priority even before productivity.

“In the past, it's always been [about] productivity. Now it's more safety driven. And you can have safety and productivity — you just have to be sure that safety is first,” said Sandy Martinez, the current manager of distribution methods for PSEG Global.

When Meekings traveled to South America to investigate the fatality, he found the worker had not been wearing the proper personal protective equipment, specifically rubber gloves. The man had been working on a pole while another lineman worked on the platform. The man on the platform was going to change a broken cut-out box that had a dangling wire. The piece of wire hanging from the box was backfed from “down the road.” Wearing only leather gloves, the worker on the pole reached up to cut the wire and was killed.

So when PSEG Global began training the linemen, it started with the basics. “We had to instill upon them that we have methods and procedures that we will follow,” Meekings said. “We start with the very basic thing, that you wear your personal protective equipment — your glasses, your rubber gloves if you need them, your hard hat, your ear protection. This includes not only the people who work for the company, but all the contractors.”

Meekings began by talking to every group within the company. He went to the engineering department and all the outlying districts. He talked to the office workers. “I told them how important it was that they look out for their own people. ‘You are your brother's keeper,’” he told them. He informed them that with more than 40 years at PSEG, he had seen many different incidents happen and had learned from them.

“We said we were there to help them, and we were just starting out with the safety thing. Look at it as ‘don't reinvent the wheel.’ [Our company has] been through this before so use our experience.”

Meekings finished his conferences by speaking to the supervisors. He told them, “You should be proud to be supervisors, but the proudest moment you should have in your whole day is when you go home at night and every one of your people has gone home safely. Then you've really done your job.”

Meekings tells the workers if they don't want to look out for themselves, they should think of their family. “Who's going to take care of your child or your wife if you become incapacitated? Are you going to be able to dance at your daughter's wedding? Are you going to be able to play football with your son?” Meekings said.

New Rules

Meekings faced some resistance to new standards and methods until utility workers realized that PSEG Global was there to help. “They're like sponges,” Martinez said. “They just want to soak up information, any kind of information you want to give to them. They just want to learn and learn.”

The new rules require all linemen and switching operators to wear flame-retardant clothing. PSEG Global also requires a worker within 2 m (6 ft) of an energized conductor to wear personal protective equipment. When Meekings encountered resistance to that rule, he suggested that the workers put on their protective equipment ground to ground, but they still resisted. However, on the first job after the rule was instituted, the linemen agreed to put their rubber gloves and sleeves on from ground to ground.

The linemen not only worked from platforms, but they also used bucket trucks for energized work. Luz del Sur owned six trucks from which linemen changed broken insulators or broken deadends and energized new conductors. When a fleet maintenance person from PSEG Global inspected the trucks, he found that a few of the booms had not been properly maintained and were faulty. PSEG Global replaced the booms and trained the employees to electrically test the trucks according to ANSI/ASTM standards. Now they check the trucks dielectrically twice per year. Chilquinta has purchased its first aerial lift devices since then and use the same standards.

PSEG Global invested in test equipment so workers could test their own rubber gloves and sleeves. Previously, they had sent the protective equipment to a university, but PSEG wanted to make sure that the testing was done to ANSI/ASTM standards.

The linemen are also being trained on new tools. The South American linemen previously did everything by hand. Bill Cahill, another retired lineman, conducts training classes “in the yard.”

“They never had a truck with hydraulic tools on it,” Meekings said. “And we're training them to use hydraulic compression in the field right there. It's the first they've ever seen of it.”

The linemen are doing three-phase junction transfers now. “They're getting very, very confident in their work,” Meekings said.

PSEG Global plans to change some of the infrastructure, too. The crossarms are about 2 m (6 ft) in length, and Meekings said that they would like to “get them out to two and a half meters (8 ft).” The company is also changing the taps and connectors, along with changing the wires to insulated wire, with all the product purchasing decisions now made by the subsidiary.

Good Things

Even though the linemen in South America lacked safety and testing knowledge, they possessed enviable talents in their own element: insulated platforms.

“These guys are terrific at working off insulated platforms,” Meekings said. “The way they position them, the way they move them, the way they set their jobs up. It's really like a ballet when they do the work. They're really good at it.”

The terrain in South America dictates the use of platforms. Some of the power lines are situated on mountains or in valleys where it is nearly impossible to get an aerial lift device.

Climbing the poles is also an impressive skill, considering that they are all cement. South America's main wood, eucalyptus, does not hold up to the elements, and Europeans, who use cement poles, originally built the system. The linemen use ropes to climb the poles, putting one rope under the thigh and one under the leg and moving one up, then the other.

People who want to do live-line work in Peru are required to pass a psychological test and a physical test every year to ensure that they are “the best of the best.”

PSEG Global brings linemen to the United States for the annual International Lineman's Rodeo in Kansas City, Kansas, U.S. The linemen get the chance to meet with vendors and see the tools that are available.

“I keep on telling them, you're going to be like a kid in the candy store,” Meekings said. The opportunity to travel to the United States fulfilled a lifetime dream for one of Meekings' outstanding supervisors, Ernesto Gambeoia, who had never been more than 75 miles (121 km) from Lima. The trip allowed Gambeoia to travel and to see what was going on in the industry. It also showed other workers that the company is willing to do something special for employees who deserve it, Meekings said.

A Difference

" PSEG Global has a strong commitment to insuring that its associates worldwide return home to their loved ones at the end of the day," said Al Matos, vice president of Distribution Performance and EHS. "Delivering electricity is extremely dangerous and requires that each person is equipped with the mental attitude, training and tools to continuously make safety first at all our international operations. Our safety first philosophy is based on a long 100-year PSEG tradition of targeting a zero accident work environment and hence, has produced world class results at Global's generation and distribution businesses. Our generation and distribution results speak for themselves as demonstrated in our worldwide reduction in the numbers of recordable injuries of 35% in the past 2 years."

Now that PSEG Global has brought the message that safety is No. 1, Meekings has seen a higher rate of linemen wearing their personal protective equipment.

“It shows in the [accident] statistics,” he said. “They are down.”

Luz del Sur has gone a year and a half without a lost-time accident, according to Meekings. Meekings took pictures of The Luz del Sur linemen working and showed them what could be improved so that they could increase reliability and protect their lives. Southern Chile (Sociedad Austral de Electricidad S.A.) is starting live-line work in September 2003. With the help of PSEG, SAESA is in the process of building a training center and developing procedures. In fact, Chilquinta employees trained the SAESA linemen.

PSEG Global cares for its 4000 employees in South America, including its linemen, Meekings said.

“Nobody's ever done that for them,” he said. “And I think a lot of things were turned around there because of that.”

Nikki Chandler is freelance writer and editor based in Olathe, Kansas. U.S.