Local People: Matt, Area Foreman, North Travelling Crew
Jul 22, 2024, 16:39 PMWhat does your day-to-day work look like?
We undertake a variety of work that benefits our customers in multiple ways. In general, our workload is split between maintenance, system improvements and customer driven work, with a bit of emergency response mixed in throughout the year. That gives us the opportunity to provide new services to emerging customers and add reliability to the system that feeds our existing ones.
What’s unique about what you and your crew take on?
A lot of our customers are surprised to find out that, although we do more and more work with the use of bucket trucks, a lot of our overhead work is still done by climbing poles. Much of our work can be inaccessible at certain times of the year so we still need to climb with a belt, pole strap and climbing spurs the same way it’s been done since electricity was first distributed on wooden poles.
Can you talk about a highlight, success or key memory from your time at FortisAlberta?
I’ve had the opportunity to work on hurricane restoration in the Turks and Caicos and Prince Edward Island which were both very rewarding experiences, but our response to last year’s wildfires in Drayton Valley and Edson will be a memory that stands out for me.
How have you seen our service evolve or improve since joining FortisAlberta almost 20 years ago?
We’ve made huge strides in outage management through technological advancements. Our overall system reliability is better now than it’s ever been because of this. Outage response is something that we all take a lot of pride in, and these tools help us do that more efficiently than ever. We’re better equipped to find and repair damage on our system than ever before. Having a more precise picture of what portions of our system have been affected by storm damage, as it’s happening, gives us a much better idea of how to tackle these problems and where we should be focusing our efforts.
Before heading out each day, what's one thing you do to prepare for what can be a very challenging job?
Our group meets every morning to discuss what our tasks are for the day, what hazards those tasks present and how we’re going to manage them.
What do you most enjoy about the work you do?
I enjoy the challenges my job presents. Last summer alone we worked on fires, floods, a mud slide and even a blizzard in Cadomin towards the end of June. Problem solving is a huge part of line work, and I enjoy situations where we have to get creative to find a way to get the power back to our customers.
What would you consider one of the more challenging parts of the job?
Our travelling crews work almost exclusively away from home. Inevitably there are some missed birthdays, hockey games, etc.
When you’re not at work, what might your community members find you doing?
Most of our winter is spent driving our kids around the province to play hockey. We like spending as much time as we can camping, fishing and hunting across all the different regions of Alberta through the summer and fall.
