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#109: From Meter Reading to a 30-Year Utility Safety Career
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Like many of our guests, Guillermo Sabatier didn’t have safety in mind when he started his career. While studying electrical engineering in college, he got a meter reading job with a local utility company, which resulted in a post-college job in the industry. Now, after 30 years working in support of the utility industry, and becoming a North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Reliability Coordinator and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, he finds himself as HSI’s Director of International Services. Listen as he sits down with Jill to discuss his unconventional, but understandable, path into safety and hear about some of the interesting situations he has found himself in over the years in the utility industry.
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Transcript
Introduction to Guillermo's Career
00:00:08
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded October 19th, 2023. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. And joining us today is Guillermo Sabatier. Guillermo is an electrical engineer and has worked in support of the utility industry for 30 years. Guillermo is a NERC system operator. NERC stands for North American Electric Reliability Corporation.
00:00:37
Speaker
and is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. Guillermo is also FEMA certified on their incident command system. And today, Guillermo is Director of International Services at HSI. He's joining us from his home in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Early Career as a Meter Reader
00:00:56
Speaker
Welcome to the show, Guillermo.
00:00:57
Speaker
Well, thank you, Jill. That's a great introduction, and I really appreciate it. And thank you for having me. I've been an avid listener to your podcast for quite a while now, so it's great to be here finally. Aw, thank you. I appreciate that. Appreciate that so much. Well, so 30 years in support of the utility industry, that's a long time. How did that start for you? And did you
00:01:21
Speaker
You know, did you go about and earn your electrical engineering degree and just jump right in and then like safety and health presented itself or what did that look like? Well, that's an interesting ride that they described there. But it's the funny part was that it started as I was looking for a job right when I was starting college. And then I applied to the local utility right in Florida, a very large vertically integrated utility.
00:01:50
Speaker
And I ended up getting a job, send something related to the field of electrical engineering, even if it was several steps removed. And I got a job as a meter reader. Oh, wow. So you were in college, and you got a meter reading job. Yeah. And so if, I mean, I want to believe most people know what meter reading is. But in case somebody doesn't, do you want to describe what that job is?
00:02:17
Speaker
Absolutely. And right now, mind you, the technology has changed to the point where most of these meters are remotely read, right? They call it, it's an AMI system, which is really, technology has improved. But back then, there were electromechanical devices. And there was one in every home. And you just had to walk to every single house and read that meter, enter it on a handheld computer.
00:02:43
Speaker
that you carried with you and that was two, three, four, five hundred accounts every day. You could be walking for four or five hours to sometimes up to eight hours out there. So that was quite the calorie burn.
00:02:58
Speaker
Holy cow. I mean, so meter reading and letter carriers are the people that were at that time showing up at your house essentially. Well,
Hurricane Andrew and Industry Changes
00:03:10
Speaker
meter reading happened what? Once a month to each address? Yes. Yes. That took place once a month and it was a certain time of the month. They call it a cycle day. Yeah. Where it's usually 21 days, right?
00:03:23
Speaker
The rough part of a meter reading is a lot of times these meters are in the rear of the houses. Yeah. So then you have to brave all kinds of things to get back there. You know, sometimes dogs, sometimes other strange sort of wildlife. Yeah. So tell us, tell us.
00:03:39
Speaker
Tell us about, I mean, yeah, I can't imagine when I just when I see letter carriers and and when I saw meter readers out and about I thought, gosh, this is a rough job, health and safety wise, what sort of what sort of hazards did you encounter?
00:03:55
Speaker
Well, there was the usual like a step hazard, right, where you would imagine in Florida being Florida, right, every once in a while you have a storm and they're redoing all the roof, all the roof material of the houses. Yeah. And then usually, you know, some of the things that fall off the roof on onto the grass is usually those like tacks or those nails. So one thing you always worry about is a step hazard. So you're wearing shoes to prevent that.
00:04:20
Speaker
The other thing, of course, is the obvious dog attack, that sort of thing. So there was a pretty good amount of that. At least once a week, you'd have a good scare. But again, there was a lot of training, and they give you a lot of personal protective equipment to prevent that. And you always learn not to take chances, right? So that's one of the things you learn. If you can't get in because of the dog, you're always going to let go. You let the computer do the estimation, then you move on to the next account.
00:04:49
Speaker
Wow, so what sort of training did you get regarding dogs or how did, I mean, how did you know like, oh, you know, oh crap, I need to, I need to about face here and turn around. Well, that was a, that was a very interesting transition because when you first start, usually it's, you get like a week and a half, right? Of like structured training. And then eventually they send you out with someone who's more experienced, I guess, meter reader slash trainer.
00:05:18
Speaker
And and really what it is at that point is that they're applying everything you learned in class. But in reality it's it's it's there was a lot of like veterinary veterinary produced videos and materials to get you to understand
00:05:32
Speaker
what dog behavior is like. In a lot of cases, you learn that a lot of that was fear and territorial behavior in some of these animals. So once you learn that, you're pretty much pretty good at avoiding dog bites. And I did that job for five years, and I was able to avoid dog bites.
Transition to Substation Engineering
00:05:50
Speaker
So while on the job, I mean, I got bitten once I left the job on my own at a party, but it's a different story. What? Oh my gosh, OK. So did you ever run into other things on your way to the meter besides? Yeah, like what else? Well, there was a couple of examples that come to mind. Down in Florida, there's an area called the Redlands, which is more rural.
00:06:18
Speaker
And down there, of course, you've got your livestock, where it's cattle and horses and that sort of thing. And so I remember going into a large property that had that white wooden fencing. And I walk in there, and about 40 steps in, then there's a cow just gunning for me. So I turned around and ran back, and I left. And the cow just didn't want me in that property. So like, all right, it's your property.
00:06:47
Speaker
and went on to the next one. Another example, of course, this is totally unexpected, was somebody had an emu in a suburban property. Oh my gosh. So the emu decided to just peck at my handheld computer for some reason, and it wasn't really interested in me, but it's still a surprise. Oh my gosh, emu comes walking up to you. So you've been charged by a bovine, pecked by an emu. Oh my gosh, wow.
00:07:14
Speaker
Okay, that sounds like an interesting job. So you did that throughout college and I mean, what were you thinking about your career path at that point?
00:07:28
Speaker
Well, at that point, I really began to appreciate what the industry, so there I began to understand the utility industry. Yeah. And I saw it from a distribution side, which means distribution is the site, the last, I guess, call it the last few miles to serve the customer, right? Yeah. And I got a really good taste of everything when I
00:07:49
Speaker
worked, my very first hurricane restoration. I mean, I was there, I started in October of 91 in that company and I think it was August of 92 was when we had that huge category five storm, Andrew, that destroyed a lot of South Florida. And that was very catastrophic, but as far as a learning experience for me, it was remarkable.
00:08:14
Speaker
Were you done with college by then? Oh, no. OK, you're still in the meter reading. Yes. OK, OK. Yeah, tell us about that. What did you learn? Well, they give you the most simple jobs, right? As a meter reader, you ended up being a runner, but you also understood what all this hardware was for because you're learning it in school. So you're adding value to the whole process.
00:08:39
Speaker
And you're seeing line crews, whether they're native from the company you work for or they're coming in from other areas to help, you got to learn a whole lot more while you're doing the restoration process.
Nuclear Plant Safety Protocols
00:08:52
Speaker
So for me, those three or four weeks, which is my first restoration was the longest ever that most people had ever experienced, which I thought was interesting. But a lot of things, especially on safety, I got to tell you, it was really interesting and illuminating.
00:09:06
Speaker
That was my baseline. And then every storm after that in Florida is known for storms. I saw the changes on how they got better every year, every year with the safety practices. Yeah. And so when you're doing recovery work like that, what sort of I mean, I think in my mind, I'm just picturing the obvious hazards of lines down that are live and charged. What other what other sort of hazards are there or is that the primary one?
00:09:36
Speaker
Well, that is a primary one. Usually, it's having a line that's fallen on the ground and it's still energized, that's a very dangerous situation. And especially when you're walking towards it, there's a thing
Control Center Operations
00:09:51
Speaker
they call step voltage, where for every step you take, the difference of potential between one step and one foot and the other becomes stronger and stronger as you get closer to that line.
00:10:02
Speaker
So that's one of the things that really made sure we understood that, which is definitely a hazard. And the other thing, of course, at that point is just all the debris. Just stepping on nails. Traffic is another big, big problem because all the signs and traffic control systems are gone. So that's a huge problem as well. A lot of accidents take place in that. But definitely a lot of step hazards.
00:10:28
Speaker
Yeah and and so well I mean I guess I want to hear what you notice that's different over the years but maybe maybe you want to continue your story of where you went next or what makes sense? Well for me let's touch on the whole
00:10:45
Speaker
hurricane restoration and hurricane preparations part of the story. And because for me, there's a very significant change in safety, right? So one of the things that to me changed quite a bit was the way they would prepare for storms in a, they will call it a dry run format, which means that every year, a month or so before the season started, right, they began to run storm dry runs. And it sounds redundant, but what it is, is it's their, they will basically prepare
00:11:15
Speaker
and they would create a scenario and they would test out every system they had on a tabletop exercise, but with all the software that came along with it. And right now they've gone to a point that is highly evolved.
00:11:27
Speaker
where they are able to even simulate what it's like to have a staging site or what it's like to have crews and logistics behind it, even a lot of tools and materials to get them properly staged to not just react rapidly but also do it all safely. One of the first changes I noticed was the personal protective equipment that everybody got
Training and Regulatory Compliance
00:11:51
Speaker
assigned and everybody had training long before the storm season came.
00:11:55
Speaker
assigned your equipment, taught how to use your equipment, and then making sure that that equipment was up to date, because some of those things expire. So that was the first thing I noticed. And then after that was a lot more training and a lot more training every year, which I'm glad I got.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I mean when when you were going through and earning your degree where were your fellow students, having this kind of field experience like you had was that common or was it unusual. I think it was unusual. The ones that were in school with me that also worked for the same utility.
00:12:33
Speaker
Uh, they had, they have very similar experiences, but they just so happened. I guess luck, I guess it just so happened that they were in different business units. So I was working with either meter reading or distribution, and then they were working for power generation, which is they working at the plants. Someone else was working customer service. So they will have a completely different experience because they were getting creating that was appropriate to their roles. But, but, but I guess mine had the funniest stories. I imagine where we sat down together to talk.
00:13:03
Speaker
from the dogs and the emu and the bovine and storm yeah was there more yeah just being out in the field we're storing power in august florida august weather is is awfully hot right so you can imagine
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah. Trying to, trying to soothe customers and say, yes, we're working really hard to get your power back, I understand. And that was another thing that changed dramatically, right, was like they said, don't, I remember at one point they said, don't talk to any news crews or news media, direct them out of corporate communications. Yeah. That was in the last few years of me being there that they really made that message very clear to all the employees. And for good reason, of course.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. Guillermo, what drew you to wanting to get an
Joining HSI During the Pandemic
00:13:51
Speaker
electrical engineering degree to start with? So you're going to laugh, but I started learning about electronics in high school.
00:14:02
Speaker
And it just so happened the high school I was in had a really good vocational program, which you don't see a lot of anymore in a lot of schools, high schools. So this vocational program had a whole lot of things. I mean, they have very strong academics, right? And I did all the required academics to be college bound. But there was like a blue collar aspect to it, I think you can call it, or actually it's the crafts aspect, right? Or applied learning.
00:14:28
Speaker
And I went through learning basic auto mechanics. I took some, of course, a wood shop. And then, of course, I took electronics. And at that point, I really enjoyed that course.
00:14:39
Speaker
And I decided to take, you know, two other courses. So I guess it was like 10th grade, 11th and 12th, and then learning a lot about electronics, I really developed an interest for that. I decided at that point, yeah, I wanna learn something in engineering and with a good level of guidance that was available at the time, right? I kind of figured out, all right, so I guess I can just jump into the education system, university system and take advantage of that. That's what I did, so.
00:15:05
Speaker
Wow, interesting. All right, so you graduate, then what happens with your career? Right before graduating with my undergrad in engineering, I was working in distribution as a designer or service planner, which is kind of like starting to understand more about engineering, but not really where I wanted to end up at the time. And then somebody catches wind of the fact that, hey, you're a double E,
00:15:31
Speaker
And we need people in the field to build substations. So then somebody really went out of their way. And he was a great mentor. And he made it a point to make sure no one else hired me but him. And I end up in the field as a professional and control engineer. And from that point on, that career just took off in that direction.
Renewables and Global Energy Policies
00:15:51
Speaker
And so he made me, he had me working right
00:15:56
Speaker
a week and a half after graduation. Right there and then it was immediate. In fact, I don't think I had a break. Now that I think about it, I graduated, I wrapped up work in distribution, I started the following week in field engineering. It's a field engineer, so there was no break involved.
00:16:17
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Well, okay. So you had a consistent paycheck. So that's cool. Um, but were you, were you like a little bit freaked out? Like I just graduated and now I'm in charge of some really important stuff. Well, that's interesting because at that point now you have quite the steep learning curve in, uh, in, in that part of, in that field, right? Specifically the, the, uh,
00:16:42
Speaker
really engineering, or they call it protection and control engineering, or some places they call them system protection. But now you're working in a substation. So that in itself has a unique set of hazards, right? And maybe Guillermo will describe in case our listeners don't know what happens at a substation. Okay, substation usually is a fence property, right? Okay. And in there you're taking
00:17:06
Speaker
transmission lines that are usually in the very high voltage. You have 138,000 volts, 230,000 volts, right? That's coming in from the transmission system. And there's a transformer there that steps that voltage down. And then from there, it feeds. That's what feeds all your neighborhoods. So these substations typically are, that's called a distribution substation. They also have transmission substations. And that's more larger, more involved. And those are more in the transmission side.
00:17:35
Speaker
But the ones that I learned to work with originally were the distribution stations. So in there, you're just a few feet away from 138,000 volts. I mean, I'm sorry, 13,000 volts. So you learn to be aware and be mindful of energized equipment, not very far away from you.
00:17:55
Speaker
And of course, like anything else, there's true hazards there too. Wow. Always wearing a hard hat, always wear a hard hat, always wear a flame retardant shirt, always wear steel-toed boots, that sort of thing. Yeah, and as you were getting that job and doing that work,
00:18:16
Speaker
What did safety look like at the at the utility at the time? You know, did they have someone dedicated, you know, to that job? And did you have training with everyone else? Or, you know, did they assume maybe you knew more because you're an electrical engineer? How does that work? Well, that was interesting, because there they had, they had a bargaining unit side, which were the electrician that they had the I guess is the
00:18:45
Speaker
the engineers, right? But everybody got the same training, which I thought was great, because then you'd be speaking the same language. And I did see several evolutions of that in the years I was there, right? And then the campaigns would change names. But one thing that I noticed that was dramatically different was it went from
00:19:06
Speaker
Accepting one or two injuries a year to at some point saying we're going to work and strive towards zero injuries. No one's going to get injured. That's our goal. Zero injuries. And to me, that was a huge paradigm shift in the entire philosophy of safety, right? Because just think about it. Nobody should be getting hurt, especially in that industry. An injury there is often fatal or catastrophic.
00:19:34
Speaker
Yeah, there's not a lot of room for an oops. You know, Guillermo, you know, you've I said at the beginning, you've been working the utility industry for 30 years from a and you mentioned personal protective equipment. When did arc rated clothing come in to play?
00:19:52
Speaker
Well, I, when I went to work at the substations, they already had the flame retardant clothing. Uh, okay. Where my level of work. So whenever you did something that involves switching equipment in or out of service there, you're putting on gloves, you're putting on a shirt, a flame retardant shirt. You're, you're always making sure the clothing you wear is flame retardant or at least not, not synthetic. Right.
00:20:15
Speaker
You're wearing, of course, a hard hat. You're wearing some sleeves. You're wearing something that goes on your hard hat, which is to prevent burning the back of your neck.
00:20:24
Speaker
And, of course, eye protection. And that was something that you did when you were using these sticks to switch out equipment at the station. Now, the substation electricians had additional layers of protection and protocols because they actually would lay hands on some of the equipment. And when I say lay hands, meaning they're using rubber gloves and sleeves and that sort of thing because they're isolated or in a bucket truck.
00:20:52
Speaker
So that's stuff that we wouldn't do. That's something that the electricians would do or the line workers would do. And they had a whole different level of training and equipment and education regarding that.
00:21:04
Speaker
Yeah, so what happened in your career next? And I'm interested as you continue to talk about, you know, how the safety culture changed and what you've observed over all this time, but what was your next stopping point?
00:21:24
Speaker
Well, from there, I went over to the power plants for usually the nuclear plants for those refueling outages. And they have a very different sort of like originally controlled documented protocols for everything you do. So that one itself, now you have another element of.
00:21:44
Speaker
of a hazard there, which is radiological. So there's those of us that would never set foot in sight anywhere that has anything to do with radioactivity, but you're still trained and made aware of that. So for me, seeing that, it's a whole different level of awareness in that regard. And then there are certain places that you can walk. You have to follow certain lines as you're walking through the moving around the plant. There's certain yellow lines and purple lines and blue lines.
00:22:14
Speaker
And these are there to make sure you don't get hit by, say, a forklift, right? So that's one tool that you use to make sure that the forklift operator knows that they can't cross these lines, because there could be foot traffic on there. And then the foot traffic knows to stay on this path and don't want to rock, because you might get hit by a vehicle. That was one example. And then, of course,
00:22:41
Speaker
There were our own dangers dealing with, I guess, switching in a confined space, right? In that regard, now you're wearing, we didn't do any switching, but we got trained on some of that, and that level of PPE was different. Now they're wearing an entire suit that's flame-retarded, and it covers their whole body, and then they wear something over their head, because now you're in a closed room doing the switching, whereas my experience, you're outside.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah. So open air. So a lot different. But that's looking at the change from a perspective of a slightly different business unit. For the philosophy, for me, I went from there to operations in the control center. And there, the safety culture was now you're really working from an office. But even there, there's hazards that can happen in an office. And then the actions you take in there can affect people in the field.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, so talk about what a control center, like what are the responsibilities in a control center? Okay, well, a control center when it comes to transmission, right?
00:23:47
Speaker
you're operating your portion of the bulk electric system where you're looking at all the power plants operating together, you're looking at all the high voltage transmission lines all tied together and how that operates and that is run and maintained. And one of the important things on there is understanding that you can operate a lot of these devices remotely.
00:24:09
Speaker
So with that one, there's no visibility physically of what's happening. So you're relying a lot on alarming and communications with people in the field. OK. Wow. It's very interesting work. Yeah. And I mean, you're describing this. And this is probably not a very complimentary thing to say. But the first image that came to mind is Homer Simpson.
00:24:40
Speaker
Well, you know, Homer Simpson is more the best description would be him at the nuclear plant. Yeah. Even though I would never categorize them that way. But they're, they're definitely strict. I mean, I have been working inside a control center in the nuclear plant. Okay. Doing some maintenance on some relaying equipment.
00:24:58
Speaker
But it's very controlled how you go in and go out of there. But the level of training, certification, interviewing, and the steps you've got to go through to be qualified, to be allowed to set foot in there is rather significant. But in a control center for the grid, you have a nice, big, comfortable room with a map board. And usually the lights are dim, because you're focusing on your screens in the map board.
00:25:27
Speaker
Many hours of sitting around and kind of making decisions were interrupted by a few minutes of stress a few times. You had mentioned when we spoke briefly about this piece of it that people who work in the control centers, you pay attention to their circadian rhythms. Is that what I'm remembering correctly? Yeah. There was a study a while back.
00:25:54
Speaker
had to do with the fact that it was really human performance. And part of that was error prevention. And one of the things that they had picked up from both the nuclear side and also the allied health or health care industry was that the majority of errors, I think back then, they were noticing a trend of more commonly occurring between the hours of 3 and 5 PM and 3 and 5 AM for some reason.
00:26:21
Speaker
So they were taking steps to mitigate that particular risk. But that's usually a time when those mistakes would happen the most often, especially on a 12-hour shift somehow. One of the things that we did was we stuck to an eight-hour shift most of the time. I mean, there were three shifts, right? But then when they tried the 12-hour shift, we noticed some problems like that beginning to occur. So they went back to that eventually.
00:26:45
Speaker
But yeah, and then in Florida, of course, being in Florida, right? If you do a 12-hour shift, now you're going to have an hour drive each way. An hour drive coming in in the morning and an hour drive going home. So now you're only getting maybe nine, 10 hours of rest. So that's another factor, right? Yeah. Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
Wow. And so were those limiting the hours to like an eight hour shift where you were, was that driven by the unions, by the company, by both? Well, that was interesting. That was really just in the particular control center. That decision was made there. And I was always a supporter of eight hour shifts. I never really liked the 12 hour shift.
00:27:33
Speaker
practice because of the fact that the way they were scheduled, they were too close together. But in the power plants, in other control centers, in other areas, they would run 12-hour shifts. And if they're scheduled OK and you're properly conditioned to endure them, then you do fine. But it didn't work well for us. And for the most part, it was because you had a strong culture of eight-hour shifts. And that eight-hour shift gives you more time
00:28:03
Speaker
Every day, uh, I guess with your family, right? Whereas a 12 hour shift you're, you're pretty much committed to just working and sleeping for like a one or two week stretch. So that's where that changed.
00:28:16
Speaker
So what happened with your career next? I mean, I know that eventually you're getting into, you know, you earned some FEMA certifications and some NERC certification. Yeah. What's going on? Yeah. Well, let's start with the NERC certification. Sure. To work in a control center, right, as an operator, you have to have a NERC certification. And we at HSI do quite a bit of like NERC test prep
00:28:41
Speaker
for the industry in that regard. So in order to operate in a control center for the book electric system, you have to have a NERC certification. So that's required. So that was one of my first steps into this part of the industry already. And it was interesting because at that time, for most people, it was a very scary, intimidating exam.
00:29:11
Speaker
Like similar to someone taking their, um, well in the safety world, maybe taking their CSP, their certified safety professionals exam or a CPA or RN taking a board. Okay. Right. And the interesting thing here too, is that this, um, they want you to, once you get your sort of initial certification, they want you getting continuing education hours. You have to get like 200 hours every three years.
00:29:36
Speaker
So it's quite a bit of training to follow up with that. And they don't want you just retaking the exam. They want you to do your hours so you're continually learning. And so that was my first introduction into that. Now, of course, Florida being Florida, you have hurricanes every year. So in order to find the process of how we did the storm restoration and the associated training,
00:30:02
Speaker
you know, they began to apply a more structured approach on emergency preparedness, crisis management and that sort of thing. So along with that, with FEMA, we all got our training. And mine were very basic, but I can certainly tell you how and who an incident commander is, and I can tell you how an incident command system works. So I definitely know, you know, who can tell you what to do in that.
00:30:26
Speaker
in a command center. So that was a really important thing to understand because then that format is applied over and over again, right? And pretty much any incident or any disaster, right? So it was very, very helpful certification actually to get. And that of course was applied every year. And every time we had like a hurricane or even a dry run, it always followed the structure. Yeah. I mean, was that intriguing to you?
00:30:57
Speaker
It really was because I saw that the incident commander rule, for example, that it doesn't matter whether it's utilities doing storm restoration, or it can be a city recovering from a flood, or it can be
00:31:15
Speaker
any other community recovering from any disaster, that structure is the same. So everyone knows who's in charge of what and who to talk to regarding what they need or how you can help or what their responsibilities are. That was important. Yeah. Guillermo, how long did you stay working directly in plants? And then when did you make the switch into more education, which I believe is what your role is today?
00:31:44
Speaker
Well, for me, once I went into the control centers, I did that for four or five years, I think it was six years. And then eventually I got to work on the training side of that utility. And they got me to work as a support role in the training program for all the operators.
00:32:06
Speaker
Remember when I mentioned earlier that they wanted you to maintain a hundred hours every three years? So that whole process, it's a required process within pretty much every utility that they have a training program and a training group. So that's where I got involved in that. And then from that point on, it's training was always part of my career going forward.
00:32:29
Speaker
I guess I also enjoyed delivering training. I enjoyed teaching others. And I enjoyed sharing knowledge. So for me, that seemed like a natural fit that I happened to enjoy. But at the same time, I got roped into compliance.
00:32:45
Speaker
Uh, which is, which is a whole other aspect and especially in their regulatory compliance. And I guess I'm one of the few people that actually enjoys that because it's, it's, it's, it's reading all of these standards and making sure that procedures and our processes fit. And so, so that by actually combines well with training, because then you're able to teach others how to, how to, how to,
00:33:11
Speaker
read and interpret those regulations. Exactly. And not just that, but then make sure they operate within those regulations. And more importantly, make sure you capture evidence.
00:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, the paper trail, right? If you didn't, if you didn't document it, you didn't do it. Exactly. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. And so where has your, where has, where has your career taken you? I mean, I'm guessing, you know, you're, you're not necessarily working for one employee or, you know, at that point in your career, did you get to travel and experience and see lots of things?
00:33:47
Speaker
Within that particular industry, yes. I got to see quite a bit of different, usually during, the weird thing about storms is that a lot of companies came to you to help you restore. So you get to experience what all these other shops did, right? Where there are crews coming in, you get to see how they were slightly different, how they did things. Some of them were better, and you picked up those new practices from them. Others you saw, oh, they're still doing that, and then you kind of will coach them
00:34:17
Speaker
on how to improve their processes.
00:34:19
Speaker
But for me, I think it was mid-pandemic where I left that utility and I went to work for what was then SOS, which then became part of HSI. And there I came in as a director of international services, because back then they were trying to expand their international division on that particular part of the industry. But for me,
00:34:47
Speaker
Aside from just working in the utility, I also did quite a bit of trialing with conferences and workshops and seminars and always getting the exposure and always engaged in that whole professional development part of the business because things are always changing, especially with technology.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yeah, Guillermo, assuming you got to work with people in different climates, you spent a big bulk of your career in Florida and hurricane response and seeing all that stuff. What was different when you got to work with organizations supporting other parts of the country where climate might come into play or did it? Was it different in the way that people protected themselves?
00:35:34
Speaker
Well, my first exposure to something dramatically different was the fact that, you know, like was speaking to land workers that were working in areas that had like snow and frost. And they were more concerned with heat in Florida.
00:35:54
Speaker
Because they're saying, well, you can only take off so many clothes before you're no longer safe to work, right? Or as in the cold weather, you can always put on put on more stuff, insulation, and keep working. And I thought about that. I was like, wow, you get to the point where you're so bulky, you can't move your arms. Like, no, they've got they got PPE that is also rated for the cold weather that they're in to protect their limbs, you know, their ears and their noses and all that. But
00:36:19
Speaker
But to me, it was really interesting how they can do that work in freezing temperatures. Yeah, that's what, I mean, you know, you grew up in Florida and I grew up in Minnesota. And so I'm thinking of, gosh, you know, the differences between, you know, the voltage is the same, but the weather conditions are certainly different. Yeah. Especially the whole
00:36:43
Speaker
handling of like a bare piece of metal, right? You just don't do that in cold weather. Yeah, right. Interesting. With bare hands anyway, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, you've, you've spoken, just touched a little bit on, you know, total, total safety culture. And, you know, kind of observations that you've had, what, what are you noticing, or what have you noticed over these years?
00:37:09
Speaker
Well, one thing I've noticed is that there's definitely a lot more attention to make sure not only do we have zero injuries, but we also are very aware of the near misses. So a near miss, right, just means you just happen to get lucky because that near miss was a hazardous condition that wasn't mitigated preemptively. Right. So, so, and that, that is just as serious, if not more than an injury, because what happens there is like, we all learn from an injury. Sadly, the injury happens is tragic.
00:37:40
Speaker
And, and, and a lot of times avoidable, but, but the near miss oftentimes doesn't get addressed. Yeah. And so that's something that I've noticed that they had, they were paying more attention to, uh, they got pretty good with the whole zero injury approach, but then the next stage, I think was a whole taking care of those near misses. Yeah. Guillermo, how do, how do the utility industry, you know, each and
00:38:06
Speaker
How do they work together or do they work together to learn from one another, you know, across the country or across the globe? They certainly do. I mean, and there's a whole number of organizations and associations, right, that are a part of that. OSHA is being one of them, of course. I mean, they have a certain area that touches upon what the utility does. The IBEW, which is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, is the unionized side of the business. They have a lot of
00:38:36
Speaker
they're quite the stakeholders in that process as well. Every union contract usually involves a large part of it is safety. Even the IEEE, which is the engineering side, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers also has a say in that. And that's just three or four examples of a larger part of many more. So definitely there's a lot of knowledge sharing taking place and
00:39:05
Speaker
a lot of procedure writing that happens based on all that, but quite a bit of benchmarking as well. I know that in NERC, they would do a lot of NERC lessons learned, for example. A lot of that involved, for example, disturbances or human errors that cause an outage, right? But a lot of times, right, there was also a component to it that involved a potential injury or a near miss.
00:39:30
Speaker
And they would always address that. And then the entire industry would see that as a lesson learned. So those are just a few examples of so many that I could think of.
00:39:39
Speaker
Yeah. Guillermo, in the time you've been doing this, and you've come across and had training from different environmental health and safety professionals, and you've seen them in action, what sort of skills are different maybe? If people are listening and thinking, gosh, maybe I'm new in this field. Maybe I want to dip my toe into working in this field.
00:40:09
Speaker
are people who are doing the work of EHS in the utility industry have additional training and certifications like you do with NERC and things with FEMA, or what do you know about how they approach their work? OK, so let me think about that one. So if they are already in an EHS type of field, right, and they're interested in getting into the utility landscape, in preparation to that,
00:40:41
Speaker
I think what I would expect is probably to learn a little bit more on, I know that FEMA has an aspect to it that relates to utility work and restoration, right? And those sorts of emergencies. One example that comes to mind is the whole wildfire situation in the western part of the country. Where FEMA, a large component of that involves FEMA.
00:41:10
Speaker
hurricanes for example here it's really it's being driven mostly by the utilities right at this point but I think the wildfires over there it's that's taken a whole different a whole different look because now now it involves governments it involves sadly certain types of litigation and and so so they're they're FEMA's were involved in that one as well but but it looks different but it's still a crisis management aspect right for
00:41:38
Speaker
Another thing I could think of for an EHS professional getting into this industry really is be open to the idea that in the utility here you're going to more than likely get a lot of training once you're already entering that role. Got it.
00:41:52
Speaker
So right there, they'll send you to training quite a bit. Release what I've seen. Yeah, that's great. That's great. Guillermo, I know that you also do some, you know, your job is in education right now. You also have a podcast where you're connecting and talking about education as well. Tell us about that in case people are like,
00:42:16
Speaker
Hey, I'm working in the utility industry. I didn't know something like that existed. Or maybe they want to get into it and hear more. What do you do with your podcast? Well, this one actually is a video podcast, right? And it usually airs every two weeks. And that one is more specific to the electric utility industry and energy, right? OK.
00:42:40
Speaker
And on that one, one of the things that I, first of all, I love having guests on that because usually it's, it's a guest brings his wealth of knowledge and experience and a new zealot to the show that, that, that educate all of us. Right. One of the things that I really enjoy in a podcast, I think is, um, is we're talking about new technologies that are applied or they're about to be applied in our industry.
00:43:07
Speaker
And for example, just the other day, they were talking about small modular reactors and how those are making a comeback. But along with those, right, there's a whole other aspect of manufacturing, delivery, transportation, installation, safety, right? So that on its own, right, it's the expectation there was one example is that
00:43:31
Speaker
Whereas before you'd see one large nuclear plant, now you're going to see thousands of little ones. Well, that's something that they're saying is going to be dramatically change our landscape when it comes to energy. And also, when helping us get to that zero carbon emissions goal. So from that aspect, that's something that we're talking a lot about in that podcast. Another one, of course, as well is the NERC preparation. I mean, those videos get a lot of views
00:44:01
Speaker
from people who are wanting to know more about what to expect in the NERC exam. I just go over five or six questions. I go into detail about them and why they answer them the way they do, but those got a lot of views. Yeah. What's the name of the podcast? Sorry. It's called Think Tech Hawaii. And that's the platform. And then my particular show is called Perspectives on Energy.
00:44:31
Speaker
perspectives on energy. Okay. And funny story, how I got involved in that. Yeah, please. So a while back, we were doing research on how some countries were getting away from deregulation and going back towards regulation, meaning in the old days, everything was vertically integrated and highly regulated, right?
00:44:54
Speaker
And then here in Europe and here in Europe, they began to deregulate the industry, meaning that you could compete for different utilities, competed at different prices for retail customers. And that went great. But then you had the days of Enron, for example, that changed perspectives and all that. And even now, we're seeing different things happen in certain markets. So in Mexico, they made a dramatic shift back towards regulation.
00:45:24
Speaker
to the point that they were now, I think, discouraging for an investment in independently owned power plants. So I was asked to do some research about this and what that looks like internationally. And the only place I had an adequate discussion on what was happening was a video podcast from ThinkTech.
00:45:50
Speaker
So I went in there, I reached out to everybody involved, the CEO writes back and then we have a conversation. He invites me on the show again and I have another on his podcast because they have different shows within ThinkTech. I think about 30, 40 shows in there.
00:46:09
Speaker
Then he says, hey, you're great at doing this podcast thing. Why don't you have your own show? And so, okay. And then I ran up by my management here and they're like, sure, go ahead. And he says, you know, you can talk about everything relating to energy and the industry. I mean, you can even promote HSI, you know, to a certain degree. And, and, and I've been doing it ever since. And how long has that been? Yeah. Oh Lord. I think I've been doing it since 2022. Wow.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yeah, it's been over a year now. Yeah, that's wonderful. And the, and the videos you were talking about for NERC preparation, is that something different than the podcast? That is no, that isn't the same podcast. So I, right. So I get to choose the topics. So whenever I don't have a guest or anything like that, I'll go ahead and do and go over some, some sample questions from the exam. And, and oddly enough, those get a lot of views. I mean, one of them has like 900 views.
00:47:07
Speaker
One of those videos here. Wow. So, gosh, I mean, I'm super curious, like how many people are walking around with NERC certifications now? I mean, I'm not expecting you to answer that question, but it sounds like, you know, there's a lot of people that need it to be able to work in support of the utility industry. I think it's several thousand, several thousand people are certified at this time. The pass rate for that exam
00:47:36
Speaker
is about 63%. Oh, wow. Which is not high, right? Yeah. And then when they go through a preparation program like the one we offer, I think that number goes up to about 80, 85 success rate. So it is significant, right? But it's definitely a very intimidating exam. It's not cheap to take. It's about $700 now, from what I understand.
00:48:04
Speaker
And it is required to work. So in a lot of cases, these folks, they get hired to be an operator. And then part of the condition of staying employed there is to pass the exam. So they're given a couple of chances. But eventually, they end up going back to where they came from. If they have enough failed attempts, I guess.
00:48:25
Speaker
How long does it take someone to take the exam? Is it like a several hour exam? Yes. So that is a two and a half hour exam. It's 120 questions. Okay. And the preparation takes, I think several weeks. Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Guillermo, what else would you like to share about working in the utility industry and things that you've learned, things that you've seen? I've seen a lot of change.
00:48:55
Speaker
And one of the most significant changes that I've seen happen over the last four to five years has been this growth of renewables. And a lot of it is driven by how we're addressing climate change and how we're addressing carbon emissions. And what I've noticed is that initially engineers, utility professionals were not even at the table when
00:49:21
Speaker
when it came to make policy or policymakers, right? When they were mandating all these, like you will have X amount of megawatts to be renewable or wind and solar. And then a few years later, they understood the trouble that can cause, right? If you didn't do it correctly. So now I'm noticing the engineers are finally at the table and helping make this transition a more controlled transition.
00:49:47
Speaker
And so for me, that's been one of the great changes, I think, in that regard. I mean, going from what they had before to more renewables to now going through a more controlled approach when it comes to moving towards that carbon free goal. Yeah. And is that something that you're seeing nation by nation doing, or is there a global effort?
00:50:12
Speaker
Sadly, I'm noticing it differs by nation and differs by governments, right? And in some cases for us, we're making great progress. We're making great progress in Europe, but we also saw what could happen when that's weaponized against you, right? We just saw what happened in Western Europe with this whole Ukraine crisis where they made a transition towards renewables. They shut down a lot of their nuclear and they shut down their coal.
00:50:40
Speaker
they were completely dependent on gas coming in from Russia. Well, that, that, you know, that had a price, not having that variety, right. And in their portfolio, France, for example, I think it's 80% of their portfolios nuclear. So for them, they had that flexibility, but at the same time, right, they're dependent on sourcing their fuel out of Africa. So when they, so a lot of geopolitical things happen, right?
00:51:07
Speaker
The other thing is emerging markets where it's like Latin America, Africa, and other parts of the world. For every coal plant that we shut down here in the U.S., they crank up four or five new ones. Wow. Right, and Latin America and other parts of the world. So that in itself is an interesting problem, right? Because how do you address that? I mean, that's proven technology that's cost-effective and reliable and
00:51:33
Speaker
And they're, they're commissioning brand new ones, these places. So that's one of the things, one of the challenges I think we see in our industry. And those are some of the things that you talk about in your podcast too. I'm guessing. Yes. Yeah. Wow. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, Guillermo, I really appreciate you taking time with us today. Really appreciate it. Oh, Joe, thank you so much for having me. And, and, uh, you know, you're not kidding. This hour, this, this time flies by.
00:52:04
Speaker
Well, it's fun and it's fun to learn and it's fun to learn from someone like you. And I'm not sure if we've had an electrical engineer on the show before, but my gosh, I really appreciate your perspective and the work that you do to support all of us being able to turn the lights on every day. Well, Joe, thank you for having me. And it's always great to share knowledge and experience and just to
00:52:30
Speaker
And just to be able to just lend the perspective, right? That's unusual. So definitely always a pleasure. And then I've got to invite you to my show now.
00:52:41
Speaker
Absolutely. Absolutely. I'd love to. I'd love to. I don't know how much I can help the utility industry, but I'd be happy to talk. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. May our employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human wellbeing, which is the core of our practice.
00:53:09
Speaker
If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer, and until next time, thanks for listening.