Permitting/Requirements

M

mannyb

Senior Member
Location
Florida
Occupation
Electrician
Recently did a project told it needed no peemits, inspections and it was ready to schedule the project was in the county. Midway through project find out we needed permits by poco consultant for power outage disconnect/reconnect. We scramble to get permits everything going and finalized. One the day of the outage the lineman show up and require we bring the service up to current standards. The poco consultants never mentioned anything about bring service up current standards for the work, so the project cannot.move forward. My boss seems to think it's my fault for not know POCO standards but Like I mentioned to him. I execute the work as PM. I don't do planning/permits/estimates/site walls with customer. In my position I'm just along for the ride. I usually have a site walk after the project has been awarded so we can do take offs , gather information needed to perform the work, then execute. I do not move on the project until it's sent to me as Ready to schedule.....

We have a separate department that handles permits and requirements etc before its send to me as Ready to schedule. As PM I execute the work once everything is approved/ready to schedule I'm just irritated that somehow this is on me...but maybe it is. I took responsibility for it anyway. Unfortunately the customer doesn't have their project completed which was my main focus at the time and didn't want to argue with my boss.
 
Buck Parrish said:
What will you have to change and how long will it take?
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We requested a power outage to install an ATS. We would reroute service wire from CTcan to new ATS SE. The service is existing and CTcan sits around 7' AFF to a service gutter 48" AFF The POCO is saying CT can needs to meet current service standards/heights in order for us to reroute to ATS.....i will say That's reasonable but we didn't know until project was awarded and day of outage. This all gets submitted to POCO for ATS approval so it was a surprise to us once POCO rejected outage unless we rebuild service on day of outage.

Unfortunately I cant find any information with these requirements in POCO service standards We assumed, i know that's our fault, it would be ok since POCO coordinator never mentioned the issue before approval and taking our money.
 
I think you share some responsibility here.

Maybe its a NY thing, but when I hear or determine a shutdown is needed, everything changes. Bells and whistles should go off.

Maybe its your company but... What PM does not review the planning, estimate and go on walk thrus?

Your company should do a lessons learned and change how the PM is involved with the project.

A good General foreman, foreman or super should have picked up on this also.

Dont take this to heart, just my opinion.
 
Joe Villani said:
I think you share some responsibility here.

Maybe its a NY thing, but when I hear or determine a shutdown is needed, everything changes. Bells and whistles should go off.

Maybe its your company but... What PM does not review the planning, estimate and go on walk thrus?

Your company should do a lessons learned and change how the PM is involved with the project.

A good General foreman, foreman or super should have picked up on this also.

Dont take this to heart, just my opinion.
Click to expand...

I agree. I did walk the site but never anticipated the lineman. On day of outage turned it down. We had a POCO consultant who approved the outage. If I spend all my time reviewing the reviewer I would get much done, i find this probably needs to happen. . Basically once it's awarded I'm along for the ride. Our companies success is it's failure. The upper management still control all the movements of project then get upset when you didn't follow through.

" i didn't know you subbed out the electrical but they didn't include the 300' trench, Transformers, and crane needed to lift the generator "
 
This happens when power companies are inconsistant in their requirement. And sometimes it simply depends upon the lineman making the hook up.
I tell my guys anything that looks unusual to the power company could cause them to not hook it up. Even after an inspection. ;)
 
I would expect in most areas a disconnect of the poco supply and changing anything on what the service connects to would trigger requirements from the poco. The hard part is all power companies seem to have different requirements and some don't seem to follow their written rules well (or use weird interpretations of their rules). The more power companies you have to deal with in your service area the harder it is.

I was going to move my power meter on my last service upgrade (it is a bit too high), but the power company had a requirement for 3" knockouts in the meter base. All 200A meters I could find locally had 2.5" KO's. To get a 3" KO I had to go to a 320/400A meter base and I did not want to do that. So I left the old one where it was and they connected to it since I didn't change it.
 
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