By R. Bruce Wright, CPCU
From time to time you may have heard one of our consultants talk about the importance of having everyone on your staff stay alert for unusual things that might be taking place out on the system, including things that are happening on the consumers’ property. In fact, we have published articles in RE-marks that outlined the issues and emphasized the need to constantly seek out potential problems.
It may seem to some that we beat this horse unmercifully. It may seem to others that the horse is dead and we should stop beating it. We don’t think so. As evidence of what you can find if you look, here are photos of a pair of consumer construction projects that came from our friends at SLEMCO, a large distribution cooperative based in Lafayette, LA. These are photos their folks took at each site once they discovered the nature of each consumer’s creativity in working around what they saw as problems presented by the power supply at their homes. Our thanks, along with tip of the hardhat, go out to Claude Ledet, Safety Manager for SLEMCO.
Here are some shots of a new garage being built. Note the careful avoidance of the service line. The plan was to allow the line to go through the roof, it seems, until SLEMCO‘s folks spotted the project.
Here is another location, where SLEMCO staffers found a finished project. Note the careful fit and finish as executed by this handy homeowner, seen below.
You can draw your own conclusions, but whatever they are, we hope you agree that in light of this degree of documented creativity, we can’t afford not to be vigilant in conducting line patrol, and in noting the open and obvious hazards on our consumers’ properties.