Shuffling Panel Designs to Help Alleviate a Client’s Wire Shop Resourcing Issues

A generation utility owner in Texas contacted us to help facilitate the completion of project panels before sending them to a buildout in the southwest United States. Due to a massive influx of work, the utility’s wire shop did not have the resources necessary to complete the panels in the original required timeframe. They reached out to Ulteig for assistance.

In the wire shop of this large utility, wiremen were tasked with pre-wiring, connecting protective relays and testing each panel to ensure it was functioning correctly before shipping and installing it in the substation protection enclosure. Any errors found could then be corrected in the shop, saving valuable time in the field. 

Since Ulteig had worked with this client before and designed many of the panels they were working on for these collection of projects, it was a seamless transition for our engineers to step in to help ensure these system upgrades would be completed on schedule.

As a solution, our engineers reviewed projects being constructed to see if they could shuffle them around to help minimize the resourcing issues. We were able to identify several project panels that could be completed well ahead of the planned finish date, which allowed the wire shop to meet the desired deadline for all of the project panels and continue a steady stream of work during their normal down times.  This change in schedule required Ulteig to complete their designs ahead of schedule but helped in optimizing the building and testing time in the wire shop.

As electric utilities are increasingly challenged to delivering reliable power to their customers, they need a partner like Ulteig who can provide customized solutions to tackle challenging demands and tight schedules.

By Wyatt Knepper, Technical Manager

Wyatt is a Technical Manager in the Substation Department. He has led and engineered greenfield and retrofit substations for 11 years. He is experienced with large-project portfolio leadership; developing value-add client solutions; overseeing hands-on pre-commissioning/commissioning project in-servicing; developing critical outage sequencing plans, detailed physical design, detailed protection and control design; organizing finalized material lists; and creating detailed fabrication documents. Wyatt prioritizes his time mentoring new team members, overseeing large-scale project system capital expansions, and supporting new efficiency implementation ideas.