I'M SURE HE'S HAD OTHER TITLES OVER THE YEARS, BUT “TOOL MAN” AND RON SMALLEY HAVE BECOME ONE AND THE SAME.

Linemen appreciate the tool man. He is the guy who brings all the cool gadgets and equipment to the field. It could be anything really. A bracket, a hoist, a hand tool, or even new cable-pulling equipment, a line truck or a bucket truck. The tool man has to be flexible but stubborn, able to communicate with executives and chew the fat with field folk. An accountant one minute and an evangelist the next. Who knows how many languages a tool man speaks? But one thing is for sure: Everyone loves to see the tool man coming. He is the working man's Santa Claus.

GATEKEEPER AND CONSENSUS BUILDER

The manufacturers and the manufacturers' reps often develop a love/hate relationship with the tool man, as they must figure out a way to work with the tool man if they are to get their tools into the utility.

Smalley has found himself in the middle of controversies that can be settled only after everyone has been given the opportunity to put in their two cents. Take arc-resistant rainwear. If you've ever spent a day in nonbreathable raincoats, you know what it's like to be on the inside of a sauna. Smalley put together a team to evaluate breathability, wearability, durability, fabric weight, cost and, most important, keeping linemen dry while working in severe wet weather conditions.

THE INTERNATIONAL LINEMAN'S RODEO

Smalley is a big proponent of the International Lineman's Rodeo. Over the years, he has put together several teams and facilitated practice workouts with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E; San Francisco, California) construction crew teams that went on to participate in the International Lineman's Rodeo, which is held annually in Kansas City, Kansas, U.S. (www.linemansrodeokc.com).

“At the International Lineman's Rodeo, you can learn a lot in a hurry,” says Smalley. He has worked with all the major tool vendors over the years and knows a lot of the issues they face. It is hard for a vendor to make a specialty tool to meet the needs of a single utility, even if the utility is the size of PG&E.

“I was involved in developing one of the first locking safety snap hooks that Fed OSHA was requiring back in 1998. Just because it was ‘different’ than what linemen had been using for decades, it created opposition from most of the seasoned linemen. We brought positioning straps with the new locking snap hooks to the rodeo and measured how many times a lineman could snap in and unsnap the device in a minute. It turns out that the linemen liked the larger ‘locking’ snap hooks because they were so quick and easy to use.”

When doing any type of line work, seemingly little things can make a big difference. Like snake bags. Snakes are the slip-on flexible rubber hoses that protect linemen from bare energized lines. Smalley worked with vendors to come up with a larger opening in the canvas bag that is used to tote snakes up to the work zone, making it easier and quicker to remove and insert the snakes into the bag. When Smalley took prototypes to the rodeo and showed them to other linemen, he came back with two thumbs up. Now another product is in the catalogs for linemen to select from.

Probably the biggest topic facing linemen today is fall protection. Because bucket trucks are so ubiquitous now, linemen are not nearly as accomplished as they once were. In fact, some utilities are seeing the rate of falling incidents going up, even as the number of poles climbed per year declines.

Although 100% fall protection has been mandated in Canada while climbing wood poles, and products to address this are on the market, Smalley is still not satisfied. Some of the linemen he talks with find it too slow and cumbersome to mess with. Even at the rodeo, the “hurt man rescue” event is accomplished on poles without climbing over crossarms. Now that so many linemen work from buckets, they are losing their climbing skills, and have become even more susceptible to falls than if they climbed every day.

In the field, double safeties can slow rescue efforts. “Without line double safeties, we could get a man down from a pole in under 4 minutes. We found it was better to go ahead and get a man down and then provide artificial resuscitation. But now it takes a minimum of 5 minutes and 21 seconds to get a man down if we are using double safeties. We are facing a huge challenge.”

Smalley believes that this topic (and many more) would be perfect to address at the Lineman's Rodeo. Having access to linemen from across the country to get together to brainstorm fall protection is just what we need if we are to adequately address this critical issue.

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Ron Smalley recently retired from PG&E. He is now focusing on his other love, the outdoors, where you will find him hunting and fishing.