The simple truth is that equipment installation issues don’t observe weekends and holidays – they usually arise on short notice and at inopportune times! We received a call from a power plant in Ohio needing help with the installation of a 3-pole high speed ground switch.  The call came on the Thursday prior to our annual July 4th plant shutdown.  The customer was in a scheduled outage and had until 6 am Monday morning to complete the work.

DeWayne Hubble, our Senior Service Technician, left Thursday evening and was on site the next morning at 6 am.  After further investigation and conversation with on-site personnel, the crew admitted that the switch had been installed without the necessary drawings - they had blown into the river prior to assembly. DeWayne determined that a bearing plate had not been installed and that the omission of the bearing plate resulted in binding on the drive crank and inconsistent switch operation.  DeWayne installed the bearing plate, adjusted the switch, and started the 6 hour drive home.

 
 The next morning, DeWayne received a call at his home asking for additional help - apparently two switches had been damaged in testing overnight.  Fearing the worst, DeWayne called David Mutter, another Pascor Atlantic service technician, for help.  They met at the factory and assembled two replacement mechanisms, then traveled back to the project site.  Arriving mid-morning on Sunday, it was immediately clear that all three units had been damaged. They quickly contacted me for additional parts and began the repair process.

With less than 20 hours remaining in the outage, I gathered the parts and left immediately for the site.  By the time I arrived, repairs to two units were already complete.  DeWayne and David had already disassembled the last mechanism.  At 3:30AM Monday morning, the last mechanism had been repaired, reinstalled and the unit adjusted.  The customer brought the plant back on line ahead of the 6AM deadline.  Although no explanation for the damage was ever given by the contractor, we welcomed the opportunity to prove our commitment by going the extra mile…three times on a holiday weekend!

Randy Looney