Final Transfer?

A couple of weeks ago we were given our notices about the up-coming final transfer for 5th-years. Come December, if we choose to do so, we will be able to make our last transfer. Otherwise, we can just stay on with the companies we are currently with and continue working. Now is the time when we have to make that decision and get all the required signatures, etc.

I've been thinking about this transfer for a long time. To me, in terms of employment and the future, it represents the largest stroke of independent decision-making that I've had to make so far. I have to consider all the relationships I've forged in the past 4½ years as well as the different types of work I've encountered with each company, not to mention the availability of work that each company may or may not have at this point in time. I have to assess my opportunities.

But I also have to sell myself to a certain degree, or at least realize the fact that the day-to-day work that I've done since June 2005 has been my sales-pitch so far. This transfer has pushed me to evaluate myself more objectively: I'm comfortable with my skills as an apprentice, but do I make a good journeyman? I haven't had to consider this so honestly before. I've only got 7 or 8 months left as an apprentice. The company I choose to transfer to will be treating me like a journeyman in a matter of months. Whoa!

A Light Week

This past week on the job wasn't terrifically exciting but was plenty of work for me. I actually didn't have enough time to do everything I wanted to get done, even with 8 hours of overtime on Saturday!

My only task this week was to light up the elevator machine room. Simple enough--at first glance--but it has involved more work, thinking, and material than I originally anticipated. I spent the first few days of the week laying out and hanging racks to hang the lights from and the next couple of days hanging the lights themselves and starting to pipe them in. I feel like this entire project should have been completed by Friday afternoon, but here it is Monday morning and I've still got some work left to do! Also, I'm working with a mechanic who is an extraordinarily fast worker, and it's a challenge for me to keep up with him. One good thing I've noticed this week is this, however: when you're focused on getting a particular job done within a particular window of time, the days go by really quickly. It's 2:00 p.m. before you know it!

I noticed in particular this week that there always seems to be more than one way to do a job. I walked around that elevator machine room several times trying to come up with the perfect plan for how to lay out the lights, and then a perfect plan for how I was going to hang them. And I came up with what I thought was a pretty good plan. Sure enough, halfway through the week, my foreman came up to check on my progress and asked a lot of questions that began with the words, "Why don't you just..." It was frustrating to me that he was able to so quickly determine a faster and easier way to do my job, but once I got over that frustration, I was glad to see that there was more than one right way to do what I was doing. Hopefully, over time, I'll be able to more quickly figure out the quickest and easiest way to go about my work. As for this particular elevator machine room, however, you can expect to see carefully calculated light falling from the ceiling by the end of today, I expect!

More on the Solar Decathlon

At the risk of repeating myself, I want to take a last opportunity to encourage anyone and everyone to visit the Solar Decathlon this weekend on the Mall before it ends on Sunday, October 18th (http://www.solardecathlon.org/).

After two weeks of being back at my regular job, I still am (perhaps over-)impressed by the five days that our group from the JATC spent down there helping out. We brought along our personal tools, two carts full of power tools and a portable generator, and our knowledge from the field and did everything we could to get these teams up and running electrically so that they would be ready to be tied to the grid when the proper time came.

Due to the rush to get their houses completely built and functioning, the students were grateful for our help. As I said in my last post, we did a lot of work with grounding and bonding that was a little bit out of the ordinary. Since these houses were predominantly pre-built and then dismantled, only to be reconstructed once they arrived in Washington, most of the internal wiring was already complete by the time we showed up. That meant that the electrical panels were already wired and were pretty much sitting ready waiting for the meters from the utility.

The contest is special this year because the houses are all tied to the grid. At the last decathlon two years ago, when the JATC brought a class of third-year students down to help out for a day, a lot of the work that our apprentices did was helping out with the bank of batteries used for storage. Our experience was entirely different. Being tied to the grid means that no battery bank is necessary. One category of competition is seeing how much energy each house produces and is able to return to the utility, something that local utilities around the nation pay (or at least credit) private clients for doing. It is a very positive initiative.

As a result of being grid-tied, however, and due to the specifications set up by the contest organizers, each house was required to have a disconnect mounted to the exterior of the house before the feed enters the panel. This disconnect and its connecting raceways requires grounding, of course, and its existence upstream of the panel requires it to be the point of the main bonding-jumper. This was news to a whole lot of people! Understanding grounding and bonding, a very important safety and proper-functioning issue, is part of our course material in the apprenticeship and something you learn in your third year. And understanding the role of the main bonding-jumper and where it needs to be placed is at the heart of the subject!

We therefore had a big job of mounting disconnects and correcting a lot of the grounding systems that the students had installed. We re-pulled feeders and re-landed a lot of the equipment grounds in the house panels. This was all in addition to the work with the PV systems and solar arrays that we were lucky to get involved with!

Our experience made us realize how crucial the work of a knowledgeable electrician is to the developing field of alternative energy. The field is changing every day and is guided by the work of students like those at the competition who are designing practical, beautiful houses like those you can visit down on the Mall.

We met tons of these students who were enthusiastic about their projects and the future of solar and other alternative energies. Their positivity was contagious! Go down there and check it out before it's too late!

Something New!

AND......... just when I was getting a little bored doing the same old thing at work day-in and day-out, I'm slapped in the face with what has undoubtedly been the most exciting and interesting experience I've had so far as an apprentice.

I'm talking about the Solar Decathlon, which is currently taking place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Solar Decathlon is a competition between twenty teams from colleges and universities around the world to design and build the best and most energy-efficient house possible. It's called a "decathlon" because there are actually 10 different categories in which each team's house will be judged. For a full description of the competition, visit this website: http://www.solardecathlon.org/


I was very, very lucky to have been asked, along with five other apprentices from Local 26, to participate as a volunteer in this year's competition. So, from last Thursday through this Monday, the six of us and two of our instructors set out to lend a hand wherever we were needed on the Mall.


It's situations like these that make you realize what a valuable set of skills we learn as we become electricians. Once we made the teams aware that we were available to help, we were constantly busy getting their electrical installations up to snuff. Our group did a lot of work with grounding for the houses, tying in meters and panels, and, of course, installing solar panels! The teams were all extremely appreciative of our help, and we were equally (if not more-so!) appreciative of the opportunity to be involved. Personally, having worked predominantly on commercial installations throughout my time as an apprentice, I'd never had the chance to tie-in a meter on a house or even drive a ground rod. And I'd also never worked with any solar installations or any DC systems whatsoever. In the five days I spent on the Mall at the decathlon, I feel like I gained a year or two's worth of exposure. What a great time!


Anyone who's interested in electrical work, alternative energy, and the future of our field should take a couple of hours and tour the houses on the Mall once they open to the public on October 9th. I'll be there myself just to take a more complete look at the final products and to talk to the students about the amazing technologies and concepts they have incorporated into their designs.




I have plenty more to say about our time volunteering at the decathlon. Right now, I'm still processing it all! I send a hearty thank-you to the local and our JATC for getting our union involved in such a great project!

Nearing Completion

The past couple of weeks at work have been a winding down, of sorts. We've gotten to the point in the job where most of the work is completed and people are being transferred to new sites. All of the electrical closets have been built, all of the big pipe in the penthouse is run, and we're really just finishing up little projects that have been missed.

At this point in the job I don't have a steady mechanic to work with as I have had throughout most of my time on this site. I've been bouncing around helping guys who need a hand pulling wire, hanging lights, wiring controls for the generators, etc. Work has a different feel to it. On the one hand, I'm glad for the variety of projects I'm getting involved in; on the other hand, I miss being able to work steady -- start to finish -- on a particular task.

As I've said, I've been at this particular site since October of last year. We're coming up on one year exactly within the next week or two. The change that you can see in the building is extraordinary. When I first arrived, demolition was just still being completed and pieces of the new switchgear were still arriving every week. It was a mess, and it was hard to envision what the final product was supposed to look like. Now, we're doing finish work and hanging chandeliers over beautiful marble floors. The difference is amazing. It's extraordinarily fulfilling to see how everyone's hard work has translated into such a great looking building!

Back Into the Swing of Things

Fall classes started for me yesterday at the hall.  Over the course of the summer when night-school classes are not in session, I really forgot what it was like to be in school.  It's a little bit tricky for me to get out there by 5:00 p.m. and have much time to take a break after work (my job lets out at 3:30 p.m.), and I suppose it can be a little bit daunting to think about sitting in air-conditioning and comfortable chairs after working hard all day (and not start to nod-off!), but I really enjoy the nights I have class.

I realized last night that you forget how big the union really is and how many friends and acquaintances you've made during the course of your time in the apprenticeship.  I ran into so many people last night that I knew from day-school and other jobs that I didn't even get a chance to say hello to everybody.  It's great knowing that your network and co-workers are a much larger group than the people that you happen to see every day.  It's refreshing.

What's more, my class was loaded with mechanics whom I've never seen before.  That's an awesome thing to see.  None of these men and women are required to be present, and nevertheless there they all are, taking time out of their evenings and paying close attention.  It's just remarkably interesting to me.  These people have been out in the field working for longer than we apprentices have, seeing all sorts of work and situations, and they've come back looking for something in class.  For some reason, it makes me sit up straighter in my seat.

Choosing Your Own Course

Back in June, all of the apprentices were bumped up to the next level: first-years became second-years, second-years became third-years, etc.  There is a sense of pride associated with the change and also a fair amount of added responsibility.  Every now and then somebody on the job will ask you what year you are--just out of curiosity--and as time goes by you surprise yourself with the words coming out of your mouth: "I'm a third-year," for example, when you still feel pretty new to the trade.  And the change isn't just in name only: apprentices also get their 10% raise, which amounts to an increase of almost $4/hr.  You can't beat it!

I mention all of this because it means that I'm officially a fifth-year apprentice.  I've got two semesters left of night school, and night school really is quite different than the day-school that you attend during your first three years.  Night classes are once a week from 5:00 until 8:00 p.m., and you get to choose which courses you want to take.  On top of that, these courses are also open to journeyman electricians who wish to continue their education.  Your class discussions get taken to a whole new level.

The list  of classes to select from gives you a fair idea of the wide range of work in the field.  Their are hands-on options, like welding, high-voltage splicing, and conduit-bending, as well as more theoretical subjects such as power quality analysis and industrial power.  The most popular class, and the one I'm hoping to take, is without a doubt the new alternative energy systems class.  It covers topics such as solar power and fuel cells--pretty relevant stuff in today's world.  It's so in demand that the hall offers two different nights of it per week!  The complete list of classes can be viewed here: http://www.washdcjatc.org/classes.cfm

Day-school

A third-year apprentice named Tommy approached me on the job today and was asking me about the study-habits I had back when I was in day-school.  He's got a test coming up this Thursday on motors and has a lot of studying left to do.

He's a couple of lessons into Book 4 of the cirriculum, which covers motors and motor control.  The first third or so of Book 4 covers motors in general--understanding their construction and how and why they work the way they do.  The rest of the time is spent on motor control, a topic which gives many electricians, myself included, that "A-ha!" moment where things REALLY start making sense and you feel like you've got a pretty good handle on things.  Finally, at the end of Book 4, each apprentice creates a motor control diagram on their own to solve a "problem" presented by the teachers.  It's super cool--you have to apply everything you've learned in class in order to create a workable diagram.  The sense of accomplishment is huge!

Anyway, I did my best to help my buddy out at work.  I remember very clearly the test he's about to take: it required reading quite a bit in the motors textbook as well as answering a lot of questions out of the workbook.

Going to class that one day every two weeks can be kind of nerve-wracking, to be sure, if only because the first thing you do when you walk in the door is take that test to see what you have learned.  So I could understand Tommy's nervousness.  And although everybody's study-habits are different and some weeks present you with more material to cover than usual, you always go in knowing that you've had a solid preview of the lessons the class before.  That's one thing I tried to remind him of.  You've also got the readings and the workbook problems to review, plus the slide-sheets that the teachers presented in class.

I don't know how much of the reading Tommy had already gotten through, but I think he felt better just talking about motors for a little while.  That's another great thing about the apprenticeship: chances are you'll have plenty of men and women around you who have been through the exact same thing several times before.  And my buddy was going one step further: after work he was headed over to the hall for the extra tutoring that's available all week.  I'm sure he'll do fine come Thursday.

Learning-curve

I tell you what: if you do anything long enough, for hours a day, you're going to get it down.  Anything at all.  There's always a learning curve at the start, where you're not quite sure how best to do the job, but you always end up fine-tuning your movements and finally fall upon the best approach to the task; after that, any job that seemed difficult at first becomes easier.  And you feel more capable.  That feeling has kept me moving for the last four years!

Well, once again I had a special mission this week.  I was asked to work for a day with a new mechanic to bang out a quick job.  Forty-eight receptacles had been piped-in and mounted in an outdoor parking lot.  Scott and I were called in to pull the wire and tie in the two panels which served twenty-four each.  I should point out that the panels we were using were installed years ago, and we were simply pulling out the old branch circuits and bringing in our new ones.

Together we pulled our wire.  Easy enough.  A basic, enjoyable, typical experience for electricians of all skill-levels.

Scott then took over tying-in one panel and asked me to take care of the other.  I was excited at the opportunity--it was probably only the third or fourth panel I've had all to myself to fully prepare.  In my opinion, tying-in panels is another typical task for an electrician, but it's one where I've noticed a great deal of variety in execution and where I've heard a lot of opinions expressed over methods.  And everybody sees a panel.  It's right there mounted on the wall at eye-level.  What's more, any future electricians coming in months or years later for maintenance or to diagnose problems are almost certainly going to open the panel.  My point is, you want it to look good.

So I wanted my panel to look good.  A nicely tied-in panel has a lot of identifiable characteristics: the wires are always neatly routed, bent at nice angles, and are often smoothed out to look their finest.  They're also usually tie-wrapped into bunches and stuck in place at the back or sides of the panel.  I knew all this going in.

When I opened the panel to pull out all the old wiring and bring in the new stuff, I paused for a moment to look at the work that the previous electrician, several years ago, had done.  I had to admit: it looked good.  I took a mental picture of it to use as a template for my own installation.  I noticed, however, that the guy had not used any sticky-backs to keep everything in place, and yet the panel still looked good.  I was surprised.  I didn't really ever consider not using them: I didn't think it was possible to do it right without them.  

It was around this time that I noticed that I didn't have any sticky-backs of my own to use.  Neither did Scott.  And we were low on tie-wraps.  My project had quickly increased in complexity for me.

Starting off, therefore, I was a little nervous at how it was all going to look at the end.  I got about an hour's head-start on Scott, and I had a little dilemma: I wanted to finish as quickly as possible (I wanted to finish before Scott, for sure) but I had to figure out how to do it neatly and without all the material I wished I had at my disposal.

To make a long story shorter, Scott finished way before me.  I struggled along the way to keep everything in place and looking neat as I moved along.  In the end I spent too much time worrying during the process when instead I could have just made a few adjustments here and there at the end and had everything looking satisfactory.  It looked all right, but I had wasted a lot of time.  I stumbled all over myself explaining that I felt it would have been better and easier with sticky-backs, more tie-wraps, etc. etc.  Scott slapped me on the back and said, "Hey man, anybody can do it with all the right material.  You just learned to do it when the conditions aren't perfect."

So, big learning curve for me on panels this week, but I'm eager to take on the next one.  And to tell you the truth, I hope we don't have all the material we need.  As it turns out, it takes getting out of your comfort-zone in order to get more comfortable.  What a thought!

Special Mission

My foreman called my mechanic and I off of our pipe-run today to quickly pipe-in, pull, and terminate a sump pump disconnect and contactor.  The suddenness of the change in task caught me off-guard and I spent the first few minutes spinning in circles trying to locate all the material we needed and the specific tools I wanted on me to do the job.  I'd forgotten about this feeling: it was a special mission, and it needed to be done fast.

My mechanic made a bold move.  He gave our foreman a completion time before we had our first stick of pipe in the air: "Done by break, man, 11:00."  That gave us three hours.  And anybody who happened to pass by us in the first hour or so would've been impressed--we were a ball of fire.  The pipe practically ran itself.  Our wall-penetrations--just guesses--always poked through right where we hoped they would and never even grazed a stud along the way.  The wire pulled easily, looked great when we shaped it into the panel, and we were flying.  It was only 10:00.  And then... the contactor.

It was 3:15 when I finally closed the little door on the disconnect.  Five electricians and one control guy later, we were done.

It was a learning experience, to be sure.  There were a lot of reasonable explanations for why everyone had such a hard time wiring it up, but it got me to thinking more about what it will be like being a journeyman electrician.  There are going to be times where I'm baffled--that much became clear today!

I never tried so hard to decipher a schematic.  I found myself calling up a bunch of basic truths that I knew were right that I'd learned in school: "When the water reaches this level, we want the switch to close and the pull the contactor in.  That brings power to the pump."  I knew that much was true.  But here in this situation we had several float switches and an array of possible termination points for various functions.  Schematics and real-life situations don't always match up!

The good thing about electrical work is that, for the most part, you know when you're right: the pump runs and empties the sump pit.  Perfect.  It's getting to the point where you hear that motor kick in that may be difficult.  But if it's difficult, you're probably learning along the way.  Today I learned three things: 1. how to wire up this particular contactor for this particular pump; 2. don't be embarrassed to ask others on the job for help; and 3. maybe it's prudent not to give your boss a completion time before you begin a project (!).

The Craftsman

The job I'm currently working on is huge: a ten-story building with three levels of parking garage below ground and a full penthouse above it all.  I've been at this site since October and I've been in the penthouse the whole time.  There's a lot of work up there!

Back in October, as my transfer approached, there was just one thing I wanted to do: learn how to run big pipe.  Running pipe is one of the most common tasks that is required of electricians (you've got to pull wire through something), but it was something that I had only had a few chances to do.  There are all kinds of different pipe sizes, from 1/2 in. up to 5 in. or higher, and most of my experience at that point was with the smaller sizes.  I wanted the big stuff.

So when I came to this job I was preparing to ask the superintendent if there was any chance I could be put on some pipe-work.  On these big jobs there are tons of different crews doing different things--there are pipe-running crews, wire-pulling crews, rough-in crews, fire alarm crews and a whole lot more--and I knew that Day 1 was my best opportunity to get placed with the men and women running pipe.  It turns out I didn't have to say a word: as I affixed my name to my shiny, new hard-hat, my new foreman walked in and introduced himself.  "C'mon with me up to the penthouse and we'll get you started," he said.  "Hope you like running pipe."  Sweet.

And that's what I've been doing for the last 9 months.  The penthouse is where all of the big equipment is on this job: the cooling towers, chillers, switchgear, generators, transfer switches, pumps, elevator machine rooms, etc.  There are gigantic air-ducts and steam and water pipes crisscrossing the whole area.  And all of our pipe has to fit in there as well.

Back in October, the ceiling area was still pretty empty.  My mechanic (journeyman) and I were running big racks of twenty or thirty pipes and having a ball.  We'd have long, straight runs from one piece of gear to another, with only a few corners and minor elevation changes here or there.  Now, in June, it's another story.  This is where you really become a craftsman.  Over the course of these past nine months, ductmen and steamfitters have been working as hard as we have and so there really is no such thing as a "straight-shot" from point A to point B anymore.  You have to sneak your pipe through all sorts of tight spaces.  And you've got to do this while obeying code and keeping the people coming behind you to pull wire happy: no more than 360 degrees of bending between pull-boxes, no more than 200 ft. of pipe between boxes, pull-boxes mounted in accessible areas, etc.  I thought I knew how to run pipe when I could run it straight and level.  Now I know I can run pipe because of all the tricky offsets, kicks, and saddles I've had to bend.  You keep learning, even when you think you've got it all down pat.

In my experience, the electricians have always been the "can-do" workers on the job.  Our general rule-of-thumb has always been to keep our pipes "high & tight:" as high up and tight to the deck as possible.  You think about this when you're planning your run and choosing your ideal path.  Every now and then, however, another trade needs to put something in the same spot and it's almost always the electrician who chooses to re-route their pipe to make way for the other trades.  A lot of people find this to be a frustrating task, but if you think about it, it simply showcases the talent and craftsmanship of the electrician: she or he is flexible and skilled enough to do the job however it needs to be done.

What more could you ask for?

When I woke up this morning and headed out the door to work, I didn't realize that I was on my way to yet another "eureka!-moment" in my electrical career.  It came quickly and easily, and I gained the proud satisfaction of having mastered just one more of the fine details of the trade that make our work so interesting... and this wasn't the first time.  As an apprentice working under the guidance of experienced electricians, it happens a lot.

My name is Adam Osielski.  I'm currently a fourth-year apprentice with Local 26's JATC (Joint Apprenticeship Training Committee) .  Our apprenticeship is a 5-year program which smartly combines on-the-job training and experience with thorough instruction in the classroom.  As a fourth-year, I've completed the initial 3 years of day-school and have just finished my first two semesters of night classes.

I decided to join the union and apply for the apprenticeship back in 2005 in order to learn an interesting trade and work in a job that would not imprison me in an office cubicle.  At the time of my decision, I was working for a moving company.  I made good money, but I wasn't developing my knowledge or skill-sets or adding to my employ-ability in any way.  I also didn't have health-care, which was something that increasingly became important to me.  The decision to join Local 26 was easy: this is a group of men and women who obviously take pride in their work, and it's an organization which cares for each individual as a whole person.

My time in day-school was great.  It was difficult, to be sure, but provided a unique environment where teachers and various students working for various companies could come together to learn, study, share work-experiences and resolve the many misconceptions about electricity and electrical work that pop up as you encounter new and different aspects of the trade.  Plenty of eureka-moments in those classrooms and labs...

Of course, a huge portion of my education has come on the job.  As an apprentice, you transfer to a new company once every 14 months.  You do this in order to get a feel of the different companies out there and you do it to ensure that you get a good look at the wide variety of work in our trade.  As a consequence, you never get stuck doing the same thing for long and you meet an enormous amount of people.

So far I've done both new construction and renovation, as well as service-work.  What's funny is how your tool-box expands.  Maybe for a few months you're splicing wires and tying in panels, using just wire-strippers and a small screwdriver, and suddenly you switch to a job requiring you to run big pipe.  Now you've got big channellocks and wrenches.  That's just the tip of the iceberg.  It's all a part of the trade and, every-so-often, when you clean out and organize your tools and come across something you haven't used in awhile, you think, "Oh, yeah.  I can do that, too!"