AFTER AN UNPRECEDENTED 14-YEAR SITING AND PERMITTING PROCESS, American Electric Power (AEP) is in the midst of one of our most exciting and ambitious transmission projects in decades. But the excitement of finally executing this project has been tempered by the death of one of our construction workers.

To review the background, AEP is presently undertaking the largest transmission line construction project in the nation, the 765-kV Jacksons Ferry — Wyoming project. This 90-mile line goes through rugged mountainous terrain from AEP's Wyoming Station in southern West Virginia to our Jacksons Ferry Station in southern Virginia.

When we embarked on this initiative, we decided to challenge assumptions of the past and take a fresh look at all aspects of this project: engineering, right-of-way management, procurement, scheduling and construction practices. Aside from the many technical and physical challenges we face, we committed to keeping the safety of our construction workers as our number one concern.

On March 20, 2004, we held a pre-construction safety kick-off, for the project at a local hotel in Bluefield, West Virginia. At the conclusion of this meeting, the 35 attendees — comprised of representatives from our contractors, subcontractors, IBEW and AEP — all signed a large banner extolling our safety commitment for this project as well as our approach for making this a model project for industry safety.

TRAGEDY STRUCK

But just two short months after our safety kickoff, on May 14, 2004, Juan Pedro Briceno lost his life on a West Virginia mountainside while performing right-of-way clearing. This tragic event hit us hard. Two subsequent tragedies on other AEP transmission projects brought us to our knees.

Upon investigation of the events, we found that no directly related OSHA rules had been violated, but clearly something was wrong. After much anguish and reflection, our transmission capital projects team realized a need to completely re-evaluate our approach to contractor safety.

We knew we had to go back to the start and challenge every assumption. First, we assessed our own safety culture as it pertained to transmission contractor safety. We held a series of internal workshops in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma and West Virginia. From that effort came a renewed commitment to take joint ownership as a partner with our contractors for the safety of all who work on the AEP transmission project sites. It was obvious to us that our contractors cannot do this alone.

MOVING FORWARD

AEP has taken several aggressive and proactive steps in concert with our many transmission line, substation and specialty contractors. Some of these actions include:

• Executing a major overhaul of safety processes within the AEP transmission projects organization.

• Hiring a dedicated safety professional to develop and manage the Transmission Contractor Safety Program.

• Requiring a full-time site project contractor safety manager on all larger projects.

• Requiring visitations by a contractor safety professional on smaller projects.

• Requiring 10-hour OSHA construction training for all contractor field workers and 30-hour OSHA construction training for contractor field supervisors and managers.

• Requiring all AEP project managers and field inspectors to take 30-hour OSHA construction training and all project line and station lead engineers to take the 10-hour OSHA course.

• Requiring execution of a job hazard analysis for each work task.

• Maintaining a worker database that will help us prevent unsafe or unqualified workers (as determined by AEP) from showing up on other AEP transmission projects.

• Requiring mandatory post-accident drug testing.

• Implementing a comprehensive contractor safety qualification and audit process.

Our industry must work together to address safety on our construction sites. AEP is participating as one of the EEI representative companies in the current Transmission & Distribution Electrical Construction Contractors and OSHA Strategic Partnership, which includes IBEW, NECA and EEI. AEP and our many contractor partners are committed to reinvigorating a passion for safety on our AEP transmission projects. The memories of Juan Pedro Briceno and others who have been lost or injured deserve no less.

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Jim Haunty is vice president of Transmission Capital Improvements for AEP. clmyers@aep.com