A Lot of Changes in 30 Years
Dave Smith has been an Industrial Maintenance Electrician since 1975. He has taught maintenance, troubleshooting and safety courses to thousands of electricians in mines, mills, refineries, factories, plants, power stations and offshore platforms throughout North America and the Middle East. Dave is a hands-on guy and teache...
August 2010
By Dave Smith
I am beginning this column on Canada Day, 2010. It was 30 years ago today that I decided to start a Calgary-based consulting firm teaching industrial electrical safety courses.
There was lots of interest and support; the previous year, one major company had two workers killed in separate electrical accidents. Once I was in with both feet, however, I discovered that interest and support were far different than securing a purchase order. Yes, it was pork and beans and cornflakes for a long time, which goes a considerable way toward explaining why I was the only Canadian firm specializing in electrical safety at the time.
I vividly recall the meeting with the field superintendent of the company with the two fatalities. After listening to the description and benefits of the training I offered, he leaned back in his chair and said, “You know, 20 years of operating and we’ve never had an electrocution...and now we have two within three months”. He thought a little bit longer, then said, “You know, we should be good for another 20 years”. And with that, I was shown the door.
Companies refused to train their electricians, stating they only hired qualified journeymen; they also refused to train their operators, claiming they did
no electrical work.
The electrical training landscape is dramatically different 30 years later; with NFPA 70E then CSA Z462—and the requirement that workers be proved qualified for the tasks they are doing and able to protect themselves—electrical safety training is now standard practice.
I have never experienced a time when so many senior executives understood the dangers we electrical workers face on a daily basis; even though live electrical work has always been bloody dangerous and every province had a General Duty clause, every sale was a struggle and we were starving to death on a dead run. (Live electrical work is going the way of the dodo, but most troubleshooting is still done live, so don’t forget: it is as bloody dangerous as it ever was.)
From this meager beginning, we moved into technical training, developing analytical troubleshooting courses and high-voltage maintenance courses. At one time, we did most types of mechanical and fluid power training; we could train on anything that had wheels or tracks, and have conducted a number of intensive petroleum engineering programs, with another 120 international drilling engineers on their way. We have now trained about 22,000 students.
For family reasons, I relocated our headquarters in 1995 to my Saskatchewan hometown of Turtleford—proud Prairie population of 503. I am surrounded now by family: both in the company and the community, and from here travel the continent.