[Speed Gibson,
Monday September 26, 2005 at 11:35am]
Perception and Reality
I truly hope I was the last in the M.O.B. to get power restored, meaning I hope everyone is OK now. But being out for 93+ hours gives one a small taste of what is happening in the Gulf right now. And it's frustrating, especially when as in my case, the outage is in a small pocket surrounding by well-lit homes at night.
I'm not thinking very good thoughts about Xcel right now, as it turned out to be maybe a six man-hour job to get our 70 homes reconnected. But actually, it's the fact that Xcel was unseen until Saturday night that had us all upset whether justified or not.
In a situation like this, obviously safety comes first, finding and de-activitating downed, live wires. But then, what should the utility do? Sure, fix the substations and other major connection points. This resolves thousands of outages at a crack, an efficient use of time. But I'm guessing that many, probably most of the 600+ workers are not trained at that level, so they are presumably on the streets.
So here's the management challenge: do you process all of the outages in a "logical" order - largest to smallest, or do you do some at least some token work every area? Again, in my neighborhood, Xcel was not seen at all until Saturday night, and even then, they were actually working on the heavily damaged streets to our North. That's unofficial of course. They may have scouted our pocket at least, but no repair was performed until late Sunday morning. Meanwhile, Qwest (telephone) and Comcast (cable TV) trucks were seen everywhere, every day, all day.
It may be that Qwest and Comcast actually performed poorly while Xcel performed very well. But even if this were the case, Qwest and Comcast's much greater visibilty amidst the visible destruction can't help but create the opposite impression.
So again, if you were the head of a utility company, what would you do? Work from largest to smallest exclusively, or bend that a little to make sure every area can see some progress throughout?
I'm not thinking very good thoughts about Xcel right now, as it turned out to be maybe a six man-hour job to get our 70 homes reconnected. But actually, it's the fact that Xcel was unseen until Saturday night that had us all upset whether justified or not.
In a situation like this, obviously safety comes first, finding and de-activitating downed, live wires. But then, what should the utility do? Sure, fix the substations and other major connection points. This resolves thousands of outages at a crack, an efficient use of time. But I'm guessing that many, probably most of the 600+ workers are not trained at that level, so they are presumably on the streets.
So here's the management challenge: do you process all of the outages in a "logical" order - largest to smallest, or do you do some at least some token work every area? Again, in my neighborhood, Xcel was not seen at all until Saturday night, and even then, they were actually working on the heavily damaged streets to our North. That's unofficial of course. They may have scouted our pocket at least, but no repair was performed until late Sunday morning. Meanwhile, Qwest (telephone) and Comcast (cable TV) trucks were seen everywhere, every day, all day.
It may be that Qwest and Comcast actually performed poorly while Xcel performed very well. But even if this were the case, Qwest and Comcast's much greater visibilty amidst the visible destruction can't help but create the opposite impression.
So again, if you were the head of a utility company, what would you do? Work from largest to smallest exclusively, or bend that a little to make sure every area can see some progress throughout?