Construction Work Plan Underway By Sheridan Electric Cooperative

Construction Work Plan, what does that mean anyway? This was a question I asked when I first started 10 years ago. Rick Knick explained it is the “plan” from which to organize the upkeep and rebuild of our system whether that be in metering programs or poles and wires. Divided into sections, we work on the most vulnerable, to the less vulnerable.

Since the beginning of the 2000 oil boom, the plan was put on hold due to how busy we were trying to keep up with the new services and infrastructure needs for the region. Now that we saw a slowdown in the past couple of years, we focus on these critical areas of the cooperative again.

I would say that during the boom we still did work to the system and always budgeted $1 million for the year, but since 2017 we have budgeted $2 million per year. As of the approval of the last budget in November, we have allocated the same $2 million toward that cause. Poles, wire, control houses are in the plan as well as safety measures for moving regulators in the substations. The retainment of two contractor crews, through the same contracting group, was also approved. So, the same crews that have been here all last year, will still be in place for 2021. The title of “Construction Work Plan” will stay the same, but the areas we work on will differ as we move through the system.

Another change for this cooperative started last year when we hired a pole testing contracting crew. These folks would test 4,000 poles a year over a 10-year program. Well, knowing that we are behind in this area, Kory Opp elected to have one of his people also start on this very same process. So, this year alone, we will have tested 8,000 of the 45,000 poles we have on the system in the very first year.

In addition, Opp’s man is doing work above and beyond anything that our hired contracting crew could ever do, thus a permanent move and position as our pole tester and apprentice lineman. I fully believe that we will see great things from this move, have more work continued internally and become more efficient in the long run. Our need for the contracting crew testing poles may be something of the past as we move forward with an internal program.

So, we have covered the dollars that we use annually for construction and upkeeping our system, the areas we have covered just in 2020, are Fortuna, Outlook, Scobey, North Poplar, North Brockton and North Culbertson areas. In this same year, we inserted 63 miles of poles (1,325 poles) to cut the span length. With this, we have replaced over 10 miles of wire.

In the underground wire front, over seven miles of this has been replaced. We will continue this process of the business as a critical function. When we neglect a system, we see failures and falter at one of our core responsibilities — safe reliable electricity for the membership.