By R. Bruce Wright, CPCU
I recently visited with one of the largest members in our program, one of the largest cooperatives in the country in fact, and while I was there I had the opportunity to participate in their monthly safety meeting series. During the course of that visit I was reminded of some issues surrounding the NESC recommendations for line clearances, maintaining these minimums, and the need to constantly look for system defects.
Everyone who has met us knows that at Synebar we are big proponents of active line patrol efforts. I know that I find myself continually reviewing this topic and frequently recommending that systems find some mechanism that will produce regular line inspections or line patrols backed up with some documentation, a written record of the inspection and the results found.
When we bring this up, we find that a number of the utilities we visit continue to use the “tried and true” approach of asking line workers to carefully observe all of the lines, poles, and other equipment that they pass in the course of their daily activities. Line workers are then expected to notice any open and obvious defects and to fill out some type of repair ticket or work order request if they see anything that needs attention. Of course, most systems want the problem called in and addressed immediately if it is an imminent hazard, but in typical cases a completed “trouble ticket” results in an assignment to go out and repair routine items at a later date. This approach puts the responsibility for patrolling the lines on the field crews most likely to be familiar with the NESC requirements, most familiar with the construction of the lines, and most often out and about in the territory where they can spot any problems. In addition, this approach results in a written record, the repair ticket, which can serve to document the inspection. This approach should meet all of your needs, right?
Well, maybe not. While all of those observations are true, there are some concerns that this approach does not address. For one thing, not all of your lines are located right alongside roads where they can be easily and carefully observed from a passing vehicle, are they? Some lines travel cross country, some are in agricultural areas crossing fields or serving storage and machinery sites away from roads, while others may extend back from the road into larger properties. In addition, most systems' employees travel far more frequently in some areas than in others, so the lines along the road near a utility’s office & warehouse complex are traveled many times every day, but remote areas may only be visited on rare occasions. If so, the entire system may not be given the review that it deserves.
The use of “trouble tickets” as primary documentation raises another set of concerns. One is that while they do provide a record of when and where a defect was found, frequently they are hard to actually put your hands on. 
For example, if you don’t know the actual date of a repair (or even if any repair has been done) at a particular site, it may require hours of hand sorting through paper tickets to find out if or when a repair may have been made, and even if no ticket is found, you still can’t be sure it wasn’t lost or destroyed along the way. This is the difference between data and information. The tickets are data. The organized, searchable history of these tickets provides information. With information, you can analyze data, find patterns in the problems, identify weaknesses, and even anticipate failures before they occur.
Another concern is that the tickets provide only half of the data you need. They are what we call positive inspection results, reflecting only those events where an inspection identified the fact that a defect existed, was seen, reported and rectified. However, this represents only the exceptional case. Any utility will have many, many miles of line where nothing was wrong for every occasional problem that this approach finds. In fact, don’t the defects represent the rare and unusual and not the ordinary case? If workers do as they are asked, they will have seen miles and miles of line for days, weeks or even months where there was nothing wrong. This is what we call negative inspection results, the places your people looked and found no defects, as is the case most of the time. But where is the documentation for that effort? How could you determine that any particular spot in the system had been properly inspected? How do you know? How do you prove it?
There are at least two good reasons to collect documentation of negative inspection results. The first is a positive, forward looking reason that everyone should be able to support, that is, in order to properly manage the inspection process, isn’t it necessary to know where and when each part of the system was last seen? Without that information it is nearly impossible to ensure that every part of the system is looked at within whatever reasonable time your inspection cycle requires. The second is a negative, defensive reason that still has validity. Simply put, the legal system puts great weight on “contemporaneous documentation,” or documentation at the time of an event, such as an inspection. The legal system properly assigns far less weight on any after-the-fact materials, or suppositions, such as might be produced by pulling work orders that suggest a crew was in the area, there is no defect report, so no defect must have been there to see. If you have to stand up in court it will be comforting (Not to mention very useful!) to have an actual, contemporaneous inspection report.
Many systems have decided that they need to have a more formal, organized inspection program. Some use one person as a full time inspector, others require their service personal to do this work, still others have all field workers set aside a block of time at a specific time of year just to do inspections. There is no one right answer; each approach can work quite well. But, if your circumstances don’t support these approaches, don’t give up. There are other easy and effective approaches that you can try, such as:
- Coach your line employees to complete and turn in at least one line patrol inspection sheet a week reflecting the areas they inspected while working in the territory.
- Give all the field employees a copy of the system maps and ask them to use a yellow marker to highlight the lines they inspect each day, adding their initials and the date next to the highlights.
- Consider involving others in the line patrol process to boost your efforts. For instance, meter readers, either your employees or a sub-contractor’s, may already be out and driving throughout your system every day. Why not train them in what to look for and let them help out. After all, virtually anyone can be trained to properly perform patrol lines and document what they find.
There are myriad ways that clearance issues can crop up. Clamps age and fail, guys weaken and sag, wooden poles and cross arms deteriorate, local authorities widen or repave roads, property owners add or enlarge buildings, and farmers change their equipment, methods or even their crops. Circumstances on your system can change quickly, often without any notice to you or your staff. An active effort to find and address potential problems is the best way to protect yourself, your members and the public.
