It's no secret; there's an aging workforce in today's electric utility industry. A huge loss of critical skills and knowledge base exists when these men and women leave the workforce. The younger less experienced workers continue to fill the void. What happens when these experienced workers retire and continue their careers in a different role as a construction oversight inspector? The younger and less experienced workers will need someone to lean on and trust. The oversight inspectors number one goal is to keep the crews safe while mitigating the costly effects of incidents that can occur when the grid is constructed incorrectly. While on the jobsite, the oversight inspector must be vigilant at all times and provide the crews the knowledge to ensure safe and quality construction. As utilities continue to put a strong emphasis on safety, they expect detailed daily incident and progress reports on the contracted crew. To satisfy the utilities objectives, upper management and some of the inspectors felt tablets would be a way for the oversight inspector to provide these reports expeditiously and dramatically decrease the time inspectors spent away from crews. The inspector would now be able to keep a close eye on the crew and proactively identify potential hazards that could lead to serious injury. Now, imagine setting a tablet or a smartphone in front of senior oversight inspectors who still carried around a flip phone and getting responses ranging from anxiety to outright fear. This article will show how PCA bridged the gap to help our inspectors get over the fear of operating a tablet and realize the benefits that stem from it. It will provide an overview of what PCA oversight field inspectors use the tablets for, how we initiated the roll-out of the tablets, bumps in the road, and the benefits that PCA and the utilities PCA works for see in the tablets.
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