Flippin' the Switch
Flippin' the Switch
S5 E6: Behind the Lines - Keeping Our Power Supply Safe with James Collins
What does it take to keep our power lines clear and our homes well-lit? Join us on this captivating episode of "Flippin' the Switch" as we celebrate Right-of-Way Professionals Week with special guest, James Collins. As a dedicated right-of-way worker at Jones-Onslow for nearly eight years, James opens up about his journey into the world of vegetation management. From early morning equipment checks to maneuvering around power lines and homeowners' properties, James shares the intricacies of his role as a crew foreman. He provides an insider's perspective on the daily responsibilities that ensure a safe and reliable power supply for the community. This episode is a must-listen for anyone curious about the essential efforts that keep our power grid running smoothly and safely. Don't miss it!
Run Time: 19 Minutes
Welcome listeners to another episode of Flippin' the Switch, natalie here, and on today's episode I'm interviewing one of our very own right-of-way workers in celebration of Right-of-Way Professionals Week, if you haven't caught on already, here at Jones Onsla, we like to extend the celebration of holidays like this one and dive deeper into what our employees do so our members can be informed on what goes into providing safe and reliable power to our community. James Collins joins us today and gives us insight into what it's like to work in vegetation management and how this job is much more than trimming trees. So with that, let's start Flippin' the Switch. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of Flippin' the Switch. Today's special guest in honor of Ride of the Way Professionals Week is James Collins. James, thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 2:Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:So to get started, do you want to go ahead and just introduce yourself, how long you've been working at Jones-Onslow and what kind of got you into vegetation management?
Speaker 2:I've been here at Jones Onslow for almost eight years now. I had a buddy of mine tell me about an opening here and took a chance. And here I am, almost eight years in, and I've been a crew foreman now for a year and a half and I really enjoy it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. You want to enjoy what you do. Then it doesn't feel like work right, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's hard work, but it has its perks for enjoyment.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. When people think of Jones Onslaught, they often think of the many workers that we have out in the community, both line workers and right-of-way workers alike. Can you explain what your job is exactly for those that may get the two confused, and why it's important?
Speaker 2:So everyone sees the linemen. They're building new taps, repairing lines, doing maintenance on poles and stuff. Our job mainly focuses on trimming, trimming limbs away from the line, keeping our proper clearances, also removing danger trees and just trying to prevent from future outages from limbs or those trees that could cause issues with the lines. Also, we go through and for new construction we'll either be mowing with a skid steer, we'll be running chainsaws, what we call saw sticks will be in a bucket and just mainly just opening up right-of-ways to where power can be brought in for new construction, like I said, and just maintaining our lines to prevent the outages that may occur.
Speaker 1:So mainly preventing outages, and you're kind of assisting the line workers to be able to do what they do, because if they don't have a clear space to work, then they can't do their job either. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 1:So what is your day to day look like? I know it's a little bit different every day. You could have a smaller job and then a bigger job the next day, but typically, what does that day-to-day look like for you?
Speaker 2:I usually will get. We'll get to work around 630. I'll meet with the supervisor. He'll give us the orders. Every day is different. We never know what we're going to get into. I'll meet with him. He'll give us the orders, talk about, discuss hazards, what to look for, kind of give me an idea about what we have for the day, point out different notes on service orders or if we're doing conversion jobs, he'll give me pointers. He'll just go through all that. Then I'll go out, meet with my guys, make sure all the saws are sharpened, they're all gassed, all our equipment checks out, trucks are good, and then I'll give them the address of the location and we'll go out. Whatever it takes to, like I said, we could be mowing, we could be on the same job for a couple weeks, a couple days or half a day, or we can be from one side of the county to the next in one day, or our system. So every day is just something you never know until you get there.
Speaker 1:Right. What is the most challenging part of your job, would you say?
Speaker 2:No job is the same. Every tree is different. You have different obstacles on how to get a tree down, how to complete it like a new construction. There could be three spans of nothing but trimming, or you can have three spans of just taking everything out. It just depends on where the power lines run. It's just a challenge. Every day we always have new people training and just making sure everyone's staying busy and we're working efficiently and safely and efficiently.
Speaker 1:Right, you guys are always busy. I was out there the other day taking pictures of you guys for social media and there's just constantly something going on in our community where you have to show up and do your job. But also when you get there, it's pretty rigorous, like y'all are doing a lot of work out there. So I know this wasn't on my list of questions for you, but working with a team, how does that translate into your job? How does it make it different than maybe working independently, because all of y'all are out there working together to make sure that everything gets done? So how does that work?
Speaker 2:You know, every day everybody has a different job. It's mainly everybody has to do their part to make everything work as smoothly and as efficiently as it needs to that day. Most of the time the crew foreman he's kind of the designated observer, he's making sure everybody's working safely. Norman he's kind of the designated observer, he's making sure everybody's working safely. But in our line there's no really independent work. You have to have somebody there to help you. There's always assistance and fell in trees. Somebody needs to be watching in the bucket Just making sure everything is going smooth as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I always say all the time within my department teamwork makes the dream work work where that translates all across all the teams that we have here at Jones-Onslow, especially as it relates to y'all out in the field. I think that it's most important there, because y'all really need to have each other's backs and have extra eyes just to make sure everybody's safe, because we very much value safety here at Jones-Onslow. So that's super important, and I think that's a good segue into one of the questions that I had prepared for you. Can you?
Speaker 2:talk about how important safety is to you and your crew. Me, as a crew foreman, safety is one of the most important things. It's making sure my crew is safe, and not just the crew. It's more of also watching out for the homeowner, the community, whoever's in our area working. It's just a big thing to make sure the guys came to work and their family trusts that they're going to come back home and they trust that I can sit there and watch them and try to point out any hazards and just look out for what's going on. You know, no job is more important than safety. To get it complete, I've been told over and over again that there's always tomorrow to come back and finish.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:There's no use in getting in a rush. All that's going to do in our line of work. It could cause some really bad issues or someone could really get hurt bad. So we practice safety a lot. We have to follow Jones-Onslow's safety program. We have a very strict safety manual. Also we have OSHA and ANSI. All their rules are nationwide for just our department or for vegetation management all over the country. So we have pretty strict safety procedures from all over the country. So we have a pretty strict safety procedures from all over. So everything we do we put safety first.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's always good, and especially, like you were saying, not only is it important for us as a company, but also for the community putting our members first, making sure that they're safe, and then obviously, in turn, we'll be safe. So we talked a little bit about safety and now I want to kind of get into reliability, because Jones Onslow's mission is to provide safe and reliable electricity. So how do you and your crew prioritize reliability every day when you go out into the field?
Speaker 2:Just make sure that when we get to a job, if we see something that needs to be done or like supervisor gives me the order, he'll tell us what needs to be done we try to go through and trim everything, get our clearances that way, there's no question about it. Some days we speak with homeowners and we have to ask about trees that simply are important to them or they don't want to remove, simply are important to them or they don't want to remove. But also in that aspect we're trying to not just not just protect their power at their home but the whole community that that power line feeds, um, any kind of anything growing under the lines that's growing through the primary that could.
Speaker 2:That could take out hundreds or thousands of people right um just in a matter of seconds or however long it whenever it knocks the power out, um, so, to be reliable, we try to do our job to its standards. You know, we have to clear 15 foot on either side of primary and yeah, 15 foot on each side of primary, so it's pretty much a 30 foot right of way that we need to keep clear of vegetation and tree limbs and removing the danger trees. We try to stay on top of it the best we can. We always stay busy.
Speaker 2:We never have downtime yeah um, so we just we try to make the most out of every day to make sure we're staying, we're doing everything we can for our community to have safe and reliable power right.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite part about vegetation management?
Speaker 2:I really enjoy my job. Some people say I'm crazy, but I really enjoy. Every day is different. You really have to apply yourself. There's no tree is the same.
Speaker 2:Like I said earlier, you can go to one job and there'll be nothing around a tree except for the power line, and there's ways of you can fell the tree which is laying a tree down safely, or you'll have to go through and just you have to figure out how to work around obstacles, not just power lines or poles. You already transformed, you have water meters, you have people's houses, anything, yard ornaments we have to figure it out. You really have to push yourself and you know I was always scared as anything. We have to figure it out. You really have to push yourself and you know I was always scared as a kid, growing up, to try new things. But every day here is a challenge and that's I've really.
Speaker 2:I've learned a lot just pushing myself and learning different things from a supervisor, and every day you learn something new. It's just. It's a good feeling to apply yourself and see the end game, like you see a job when you start a new construction, like I said, it can be just a little bit of trimming or you can go through and clear a whole. There's no telling how much stuff to clear, but you get to see the beginning and end product and it just makes you, I'm satisfied when I see the difference that we make when we go somewhere.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that seems really satisfying.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Like I said, I I just enjoy the job. I have confidence in myself and my crew that, um, there's not many tasks that we can't complete and we'll figure out a way to get it down. Whether it's just we learn if we have to do something new, we just we try to apply ourselves every day right.
Speaker 1:It's good to have that confidence in your crew and yourself too, and it seems like there's never a dull moment because every day is different every day and it seems like when there's a challenge, you guys rise to the occasion, which is good to know, you know being on our lines, and again, that whole reliability and safety theme that we try to enforce to our members, so so that's good to hear.
Speaker 2:Especially like a storm work. Um, I've worked a couple of storms and, um, another thing I enjoy about it is you know you're out there in a storm and you got people, you got thousands and thousands of people and you go out there and just seeing the people how excited they are when you get there and, yes, storm work is very dangerous but just seeing the different things that you can figure out whether you have to rope something, you have to put ropes and stuff to catch stuff and I guess it's just the adrenaline that is going through.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:That's another thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what are some common misconceptions people have about your job? Because I'm sure a lot of people in our community drive by your crew, whether it's on the road or in their neighborhood, and just initially, from looking at what y'all are doing, it just seems like y'all are trimming trees. But as we've heard in this episode, it's a lot more than that. So what do you think, especially when talking to people you know before trimming trees around their home or in their area? What do you think is the most common misconception about vegetation management?
Speaker 2:Well, the most common misconception to me is some people just don't understand why we do what we do. We're not doing it just to take their trees down. We're not doing it to just try to be telling them what they can do in their yards and stuff. But the main thing is safety. If you've got a tree that's under the power line, you have children. All it takes is an accident. We just try to make it as easy as possible for them to be out there and maintenance the lines and just keep our community safe. We don't want anything to happen to our guys and especially to the community out that we work around every day and we're providing power for.
Speaker 1:All right. So, to wrap this episode up, if members see you and your crew out in the community, how can they help? How can they help you guys do a better job at what you're doing, or just cooperate in a way that allows you to, like you said, keep our community safe?
Speaker 2:The main thing is, if we're working in your area or you see us on the road, just kind of maintain a safe distance from us. We have a lot of dangerous equipment. Most time me as a crew foreman, I'm observing the crew, I'm looking at all surroundings, making sure everything's clear. But if you have a question for us, try to get somebody's attention. Just don't come in the work zone. Most time, like I said, somebody's watching and they can come to you. Don't come to them.
Speaker 2:Also, when we're working in the roadways, just please be mindful of all the signs and our flaggers. We're all just trying to work safe and go home. Most of the time we're working within inches of that middle line and if somebody comes flying through and somebody just happens to have to get out of the way of something, if we're in the road working, please mind the road signs and flaggers. Kind of go slow and just give us some room to work. Just be cautious. Anything can happen. We work so close to that center line that I just don't want one of my guys or somebody with a car. I don't want an accident to happen. If you have friends in the bucket or we're working on the power lines, please don't blow the horn.
Speaker 1:It could startle somebody. That can be very dangerous.
Speaker 2:It doesn't happen a lot, but sometimes we might have a new guy in training and he might be in the middle of something and it might spook him. And if you see a tree that you think needs to be trimmed or taken down, don't be scared to give us a call. I'm not trying to put more work on us, but we just try to eliminate all the hazards so we can provide safe and reliable power.
Speaker 4:Exactly.
Speaker 1:All right, james. Well, thank you so much for joining us today. I know I learned a lot, so I hope our members do as well. So much for joining us today. I know I learned a lot, so I hope our members do as well. If you want any more information on our right away crew, you can give us a call or you can visit our website, wwwjoemccom. I know we've got some valuable information in our newsletters and in our blog posts, so I think that's about it for today's episode. Thank you, guys, for joining us and we will talk to you next time. Thanks, james.
Speaker 2:You're welcome. Thanks for having me.
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Speaker 4:Well, folks, that'll do it for this episode of Flipping the Switch Until next time. If you don't currently follow us on Facebook, instagram or any of our other social media channels, consider doing so. It's the best way to keep informed about what's going on with your cooperative. Thanks again.