riggs newsletter.indd

The
POWER LINE
Message From The Safety Group
-Donald L. Masters, Director
“What Did You Say ?”
Other than Safety folks like myself,
I think you would all agree that no
more than a hand-full of the nation’s
total workforce has ever taken the
time, or has had an interest in sitting
around reading any, much less all of the
OSHA Standards that are applicable to
their work. But if you are one of those
people, you would already be aware of
the fact that nearly all of those regulations make the point that we – as an
employer – are required to ensure that
all of the policies, procedures, training,
information, and safeguards that apply
to each of our job sites are clearly communicated to, and understood by all. I
think you would also agree that for the
most part we’ve always done a very
good job… but what happens when
you find that a substantial number of
your employees either cannot, or find
it difficult to comprehend the English
language?
Think about it. We in the Safety
Group look at every job from every
angle and then use that information to
not only create a comprehensive Job
Hazard Analysis (JHA), but to produce
a site specific safety plan that outlines
the means by which all of the hazards
related to that job will be controlled or
eliminated. From that point forward
we rely on our Job Safety Analysis
(JSA) program to identify (and make
known) any additional guidelines that
will make “that task” being performed
“by that crew” at “that site” on “that
day” the safest for all that are scheduled to participate. What happens if
our supervisors are unable to verbally
communicate those details and instructions to everyone at the site, and for
those whose primary language is not
English, how can we expect them to
sign their names to a document (a JSA
for example) if they’re not able to read
and/or understand the safeguards listed
on that document that need to be followed ?
The answer is simple. In order to
comply with the intent of the regulations, we are going to embrace the op-
CONGRATULATIONS!
Certificate of Training
Gary Barson
Bill Berger
Robert Brydge
Eric Carlson
Mike FitzPatrick
Mark Glowacki
Michael Good
Paul Hanlin
Robert Hochstuhl
Kenneth Kessler
Thomas Krupnik
George MacIntyre
Harry McIvor
Joe Soreth
Kenneth Webb
Scott Zemaitatis
The Above Individuals Have Completed the Required Course
Training for 30-Hour Occupational Safety & Health Training
March/April 2007
~Safety Is~
Our Commitment
portunity to convert many of our daily
forms and other informational records
into the various languages that may
be used by our employees … because
that’s the right thing to do in order to
meet the needs of everyone “under one
hat”.
Save the Dates
Safety Training / Meetings
APRIL
Baltimore - Tuesday 4/17
Sharon Hill - Thursday 4/19
TOPIC: Trenching &
Excavating
MAY
Baltimore - Tuesday 5/15
Sharon Hill - Thursday 5/17
TOPIC: To Be Announced
(Future topics will be built
around our updated corporate safety manual)
Safety Training / Meetings
are held from 4PM until 6:30PM
Computer Corner
-Scott Zemaitatis
All spam issues are
now dealt with by Joanne Wilson.
Feel free to forward spam messages
to her at [email protected].
Project News
All Our Faults-Manfred Konrath, Vice President, Underground Utilities
In reflection with one of our longtime employees, Steve Didier, we
realized that we have been performing
Street Light Cable Fault Locating for
over 25 years. During that time, we
estimate we have repaired over 100,000
faults.
Reasons for cable faults can include deterioration of cable due to age,
impact of groundwater on cable, digins due to installing trees, mailboxes,
guardrails, etc. In addition to Street
Light Cable Fault Locating, we also locate faulted Secondary Cables (including residential services). In a nutshell,
the job entails using instruments to
locate cable leakage, digging up and
replacing the damaged section of cable,
making splices, testing the circuit under
load, backfilling, and ground restoration after the fault has been fixed.
Above: 17 degree temperatures with
a 20 MPH wind doesn’t stop Crew
Leader Quintus Riles and Groundman Stewart Thornton from repairing
the street lights.
Below: Crew Leader David Brune
and Groundman (Exp.) James Farren
test the cables in the street light.
Above: Crew Leader David Brune
and Groundman (Exp.) James Farren take load readings and test burn
the street light after making repairs.
Both Sides of the River
Paul Bizon, Vice President, Electrical Group
Work is now progressing on the
rough-in of the 15th & 16th floors of
a Center City, Philadelphia hotel to
condo conversion. The mock-up units
and the 14th floor are being dry-walled
with finishes expected to be completed any day. The switchgear will be
delivered shortly, which creates a new
challenge; rigging the gear to the 22nd
floor penthouse from a narrow city
street. This task will involve a road
closure, police traffic control, and most
likely a host of spectators.
Work continues at a Philadelphia
area refinery as the Turnaround at the
1232 Revamp Unit has begun. We
are also installing the remaining light
fixtures and instrumentation on the “L”
structure. In addition, we are installing new data cables and UPS system
for the Console Migration project that
is running simultaneous to the Turnaround. This upgrade gives remote
monitoring and control of the Unit
from the Central Control Room located
elsewhere in the refinery.
We have completed the major portion of the installation of new alarm
notification devices throughout the
entire facility of a Philadelphia chemical manufacturer. The remaining work
consists of adjusting these new devices.
In early March we will go in and demo
the eliminated cable and equipment.
At another Philadelphia area
chemical manufacturer work has been
completed on a new prototype system
and interface with the owner’s control
panels to accept this new operation.
A Philadelphia liquids terminal has
kept us busy with on going capital
improvements throughout their 35 acre
facility. The most recent project is running new fiber optic cables to various
points in the facility to monitor operations from a central location.
Page 2
Crossing the river to South Jersey,
we were recently called in to perform
maintenance services to correct many
deficiencies found on several unit heaters in a bulk mail machinery production facility.
A South Jersey refinery is keeping
us busy as we continue working on
various instrumentation and electrical
projects. There is a considerable volume of work scheduled for this spring
that we are assisting in the design and
budgeting aspects of these projects.
Also in South Jersey, a manufacturer
of cement based shingles and siding
products recently had a power outage
which created a major freezing issue,
greatly affecting their operations. We
continue to provide maintenance and
construction services to keep their
facility running. We are maintaining
an instrument tech on site to assist
the owner in performing equipment
calibrations.
Frightful February Weather
-Scott Zemaitatis, Project Manager
This winter may not have been the snowiest one on record, but February went down
in the history books as one of the ten coldest
months since the National Weather Service
started keeping records over 100 years ago.
Through it all, the cold, the wind, the ice
and snow, our overhead crews from New
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland worked
long hours on multiple major utilities without incident. Power was restored to hundreds of thousands of customers who had
lost their power due to ice and downed lines.
Left: Greg Trotta and Steve Gilbert (left to right
in picture) repairing street light cable faults in
extreme conditions. Crews were working 6 days
a week to catch up due to snow and ice hindering
production. Steve and Greg work out of White
Marsh yard.
Right: Mike Brune isolating a cable in a pad mount
transformer. March 1st will be Mike’s 14 year anniversary with Riggs Distler. Mike is a Street Light Mechanic/Foreman out of our White Marsh, MD yard.
Below: Robert Brydge, a Street Light Mechanic out
of White Marsh really “digs” his job as you can see by
Rob’s pants and shoes. Service with a smile!
Trivia Question
Q: What was the largest black-out in
North American History?
A: The North American Black Out of 2003.
It affected an estimated 10 million people in
the province of Ontario (about one-third of
the population of Canada), and 40 million
people in eight U.S. states (about one-seventh of the population of the U.S.).
page 3
On the Mechanical Side
-Steve Haller, Vice President, Mechanical Group
Things have wrapped up at one of
several Mid Atlantic power generating
plants that we have been performing
work at. The project here lasted for approximately five weeks and consisted
of a lower slope replacement. Other
ongoing projects at power generating
Above: Intricate 10” stainless
steel piping feeds the high pressure line into the spray nozzles.
Above right: The first of the
Venturi units is complete - one
down, three to go.
Employee News
Ralph Schwank, an electrician
with Riggs for nearly 29 years truly
knows the meaning of giving to the
community. He joined the Voorhees
Township Fire Department in 1985
as Fire Commissioner, which he
held for 5 years before becoming
a Firefighter, working up through
the ranks. He was also an EMT for
6 years and Battalion Chief for 10
years. He retired as Battalion Chief
and is now the Safety Officer. He
has done extensive training through-
plants in this area are a new
re-heater unit, a boiler outage, as well
as a by-pass duct.
We’ve also begun the scrubber work
of a multi-million dollar contract with a
Mid Atlantic steel producer. The project additionally includes fans, duct, and
piping work. The crews are working
over the basic oxygen kettles utilizing
breathing gear. This is the first time in
Riggs’ near 100 year history that this
type of work is being performed while
the plant is in operation. This work is
expected to continue through mid May.
-SERVICE ANNIVERSARIESFebruary
Tom Krupnik- Equipment Mechanic, White Marsh yard – 13 years
Jeff Singleton – Secondary Fault Locator/Foreman, Odenton yard – 4 years
March
Mike Pinder – Street Light Mechanic, White Marsh yard – 6 years
Roy Coonts – Manhole Laborer, Baltimore – 5 years
Larry Alston – Street Light Mechanic, White Marsh yard – 4 years
e Support
W
out his career and continues his
training to this day. Ralph has put
in many sleepless nights for the good
of his community. We thank Ralph
for all he does to make us safe.
page 4
Ou
s
r Troop