Collinsville
Electric Department
Receives Electric Safety Award
Municipal Electric
Systems of Oklahoma (MESO) announces that the Electric Department of
the City of Collinsville was named as a 1st Place Winner in the association’s
annual Electric Operations and Safety Competition. Collinsville was
recognized in the category for cities under 10,000 population. Collinsville’s
Electric Department has gone six consecutive years without an on the
job accident in one of the nation’s most dangerous occupations.
Collinsville was
recognized for outstanding distribution construction standards, good
customer service, and very low margin of customer service disturbances.
Collinsville employees meet the requirements of their work with professionalism
and safety due to employer efforts. These efforts include four years
of rigorous field experience and testing for each line worker before
he achieves journey lineworker status. In addition, employees do safety
reviews before each job and attend monthly training and safety sessions
in addition to other training provided by the utility.
Collinsville scored
well in reliability with crews normally responding to and correcting
a customer outage within 80 minutes. By having local ownership of the
electric system and crews located within one mile of most customers,
residents in Collinsville don’t wait long for electric service
crews to respond to problems.
MESO General Manager
Shane Woolbright presented the award to the Collinsville electric department
staff. Said Woolbright, “The City of Collinsville has demonstrated
a continuous effort in the past decade to be the highest quality public
power system. This is evidenced by such actions as training of employees
in system preventive maintenance and having employee development programs
to prevent problems from overvoltage and overcurrent. Good tree trimming
practices play a big role in reliability as well.”
“The current
construction standards and employee training standards of the utility
are superior, and that effort has resulted in the outstanding reliability
citizens receive and the presentation of this award. It should be noted
that good service and 100% employee attendance have a connection. “
MESO is an electric
utility trade association representing cities in Oklahoma, Missouri,
Kansas, and Arkansas. The association’s 90 member utilities provide
non-profit electric services to some 600,000 people in the four states.
Collinsville has been a member of the association since 1972.
Collinsville is
also a signatory to the MESO Mutual Aid Agreement whereby the member
cities pledge to work jointly to assist each other in cases of emergency
of natural disaster. The agreements, recognized by the Federal Emergency
Management Administration (FEMA), insure that trained utility crews
are promptly dispatched to locations in the event of emergency.
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