A series of happy accidents

As a kid, I went through these obsessions over how things worked, but they were always science- or technology-related. I was the weird kid in class that was obsessed with dinosaurs. And then, as toys came out that were more technologically advanced, I’d be the one that would rip them apart and try to figure out how they worked. It’s something that I’ve always done. My parents thought I was nuts, but [being inquisitive] landed me in what has turned out to be a pretty good career.

The way I ended up working in this industry wasn’t on purpose; it just kind of happened. Before college, I was actually looking at studying pharmaceuticals and taking a microbiology approach to that field. Then, when I was in high school, I got Lyme Disease. At the time, there were not many good treatments available to treat the disease, so I thought, “why don’t I study this as my focus?"

But the more I learned more about the pharmaceutical industry, the more turned off by it I became. As I interacted with people in that sector, I felt like I didn’t fit in and realized working in pharmaceuticals was not the appropriate field of science for me. That’s how I ended up working in energy. Given my personality and the general service the power sector provides, I now work in an industry that feels more like home.

The work we do

When someone unfamiliar with my work asks me to explain what I do, I distill it down to the simple explanation that “I help keep people’s lights on,” but a more eloquent answer is that I provide diagnostics for power equipment, based on oil chemistry. There’s oil inside electrical apparatus [such as a transformer], and that oil acts like blood does in a human. If you’re sick and you go to the doctor, they may take your blood and provide with you a diagnosis based on those blood tests. Or, if you get your blood drawn during a routine physical, you now have a baseline for future comparison. We can take a sample of the transformer oil and run a series of tests to either establish a baseline or uncover a fault. So, in this case, it’s a machine application versus a human application, but that’s it in a nutshell. We’re assessing the health of electrical apparatus based on oil chemistry, so it’s really not that far a stretch from what I originally wanted to go pursue.

This [period during the pandemic] has been one of the most challenging things as a manager I’ve had to face. I feel I’ve been on a fast-running train. Leading a team of 50 during a pandemic has been nothing short of bizarre and wild, but as a laboratory director, I really have two priorities: The first is to keep my staff safe. The lab environment is one that has very unique hazards, as you can imagine, and COVID has added new and unique safety requirements on top of the usual lab safety protocols.

Doble labs provide extremely important key diagnostics to the industry, so my second priority is keeping the doors open. I think we were about two weeks into the pandemic when we started receiving letters and emails from our customers asking if we were going to shut down and expressing to us how critical it was to remain open to support them. It was important that we let them know we heard them and that they knew we were there for them.

Also, the data that we produce actually means something – people are looking at this data and making decisions – and they often rely on Doble’s lab to provide the diagnostics and key context. They’ll call and ask me to explain crucial next steps and provide additional diagnostic support.We’re always looking at different ways to further develop and improve our diagnostics so we can provide the most accurate and insightful answers to their questions.

Because oil-testing is a key diagnostic, especially dissolved gas analysis (DGA), which is the most important diagnostic test in our entire industry, it’s important we stay up and running throughout the pandemic the best we can. People cannot go without utilities, service companies or generators, so we completely redesigned our entire workflow and the way that we schedule our shifts. We also worked as a team with our customers to come up with a model of operating that worked best for everyone. I am happy to say that as a result of the work we did, we did not have to shut down once.

Using our experience

Doble’s lab has been testing since 1933, and a lot of our interaction with Doble Engineering customers has been the old-fashioned, person-to-person connection. Since we can’t meet people in person right now, we’ve had to come up with other ways to make this connection, because it’s probably going to be a while until we’re traveling or meeting in-person again.

Recently, we switched from hosting our laboratory diagnostic presentations that used to happen face-to-face to online. We’ve been conducting training via webinar, and we now offer prerecorded video training that is more easily accessible to the masses.

As far as how the pandemic has affected my team, our experience has been a little different than others in the industry. I come from a background, where I’ve dealt a lot with emergency response and worked as a hazmat first responder, so this is the type of situation I am trained to deal with. Also, all lab employees are trained to deal with emergency situations in general. Even though none of us had ever dealt with a pandemic, we have been able to apply our experience to this situation.

None of us is happy with it, but we radically accept the reality, and my team is dedicated to serving the industry and to ensuring we provide the data our customers need to operate their equipment safely.

Appealing to future generations

If you go to a career fair, you might see industries that may be underdogs but they’re also really cool. For so long, our industry was kind of a dinosaur, but because of new technology, renewables and cybersecurity, our sector has become “sexier.” We now have more IT considerations, like the role of cybersecurity and implementing systems to keep data and assets safe. We also have online monitors that can feed you data in real time and aid in the decision-making process. Automation and artificial intelligence are emerging as technologies that will play a bigger role in the work we do. Renewable energy, especially solar, is another significant factor changing the way we generate power.

It used to keep me up at night, wondering who was going to take the place of the experienced management and workers who are retiring. Because of the green movement and emerging technology, I am no longer as concerned, as more young people are gravitating towards those things. This is an exciting time to be entering the power industry.

When people think about professionals who work in electric power, they picture fieldworkers wearing hardhats, but there is so much more to what we do and so many things happening behind the scenes. In addition to fieldworkers, we have a variety of professionals including chemists, operations directors, people who work on infrastructure and different types of engineers.

Beyond the pandemic

My team has dealt with safety measures forever. Because of COVID, we’ve incorporated additional protocols, but I’m trying to look beyond the pandemic because for so long, that’s all our universe has been.

It helps that we are working on some cool projects, like the sensors we’re developing for online dissolved gas monitors, which is technology that will become more important as we transition from analog to a digital grid. Online DGA monitoring allows utilities to monitor their assets in real time allowing them to spot potential issues earlier and possibly avoid catastrophic failures

Now that we’ve made it nearly a year since COVID first hit, it’s obvious we will be dealing with the virus as part of our daily lives, but the pandemic cannot be – nor is it – the driving factor for everything we do.