While safety is always emphasized at Northeast Community College, there was heightened awareness this week as the college hosted statewide schools for about 100 utility linemen and utility workers.
Northeast partnered with the Nebraska Rural Electric Association (NREA) to host Overhead and Underground schools from Tuesday, June 3, to Thursday, June 5, featuring about 100 participants across the state. Tuesday and Wednesday were full days, and conference attendees left at noon on Thursday.
Scot Ouderkirk, Northeast associate director of Job Training and Safety, said combining the schools was new this year.
“Usually, Northeast hosts one school each year; typically it is the overhead school,” Ouderkirk said. “This year is the first year that we combined everything and did it all in one week. On the other side of the state in Sidney in the fall, we do the overhead school.”
Most years there is one overhead school on each side of the state, with the underground school alternating each year between the eastern and western sides of the state.
Ouderkirk and Larry Oetken, Northeast Job Training & Safety coordinator, both assist with the training on each side of the state.
Several places at Northeast were used for this year’s schools, including classrooms at the Pohlman Ag Complex, locations on the utility line program campus, and land just east of the semi-truck driving site and to the northeast of it.
The schools focused on such things as boring underground, overhead and live wire simulation work, and special apparatus. The schools are detailed, with no time to allow participants to attend more than one school. Attendees signed up ahead of time for whichever school they wanted to attend.
The schools featured three camps, with roughly 42 in the overhead school, 21 in the underground boring and 18 in special apparatus.
Rural Electrical Associations and several utilities from across the state were represented at the schools. Monthly to bi-monthly instruction takes place across the state with three safety instructors.
Underground School
Jon Magwuire (fluorescent vest), a sales representative for Vermeer, demonstrates how to operate boring equipment during a school on safety direction drilling at Northeast Community College on Wednesday, June 4. (Northeast Community College)
