Snubbing to Steel Lattice Structures: Lessons Learned
In the fall of 2010 I participated as an incident investigation board member to determine why a light-duty steel lattice structure collapsed, resulting in an injury. Shortly after this accident took place, our investigation team met with and interviewed the crew members who were at the work site that day. One crew member in particular […]
Electrical Capacitors in AC Circuits
In this month’s Tailgate, we will discuss the functions of a capacitor in an alternating current (AC) circuit, including charge and discharge, applications and connections in power circuits, and capacitor safety. An electrical capacitor is an electrical device that stores up electricity or electrical energy and improves an AC circuit’s power factor. It has three […]
Learning Leadership: Personal Protective Emotional Armor: Part 1
Prior to the 1990s, thoughts and emotions typically were not topics of discussion. That was a time when children were to be seen and not heard, and employees were not to think, but rather just do as they were told. The very idea of talking about what was on your mind or how you felt […]
Train the Trainer 101: Grounding Trucks and Mobile Equipment
A few years ago at a company I worked for, an experienced, highly trained professional lineman, thinking he was lifting a truck ground, inadvertently lifted the ground rod connection for a transmission circuit bracket ground. Induction current instantly killed him as though he had made contact with an energized phase. The genesis of the incident […]
Voice of Experience: The Globally Harmonized System is Here
Creating one global standard to classify and label hazardous chemicals has been a topic of international negotiations since the process began in Brazil in 1992. Now, the long-awaited and much-discussed Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labeling of Chemicals (GHS) is beginning to appear in the American workplace. December 1, 2013, was the deadline for […]
