NEPPA Continues to Grow

2012 continues to be a transformational year for NEPPA. I think that those who retired from the industry in the past few years might not recognize us come January. We will use our new training center for the first time on Aug. 8 for our General Foreman’s Roundtable. At this event GFs will be given the opportunity to comment on NEPPA’s new performance standards for apprentices. These new standards will go into effect on Jan. 1. We will end the month with Apprentice I and Advanced Lineworker at the site.

During this time, we will continue the site build-out including the pole yard, confined space and substation areas. While we are finishing off our new home, some of our family has chosen not to move with us. Dave Fabrizius retired in May and Mary Harrington will be retiring soon. Sharon Davies, who has been that voice on the other end of the line for all of you for the past five years, will be leaving us just days after you receive this. As a resident of Pascoag the drive to Littleton will be too far. She is already training her replacement.

Over the next month or so we will also be releasing the information on our fall
PUMP program (Nov. 14-16), and our new NESC course. We will also be giving you an opportunity to sign up for our new APPA Safety Manual update. Released just weeks ago, APPA has done a great job of addressing many of the areas that we all wanted developed.

We have also been working on changes to the Mutual Aid Program. After the committee's last meeting, Scott Edwards and I have been meeting with the New York organizations and it appears that we will be adding to our program in the near future. As soon as this is buttoned up we will release all of the details. This will greatly improve our assistance to western members and will help the New York municipals that also would like to improve their response times to some of their areas.

With this much happening it makes attendance at the Annual Conference (Sept. 16-19 in Sunday River) more important than ever. So if our Sunday night Football Party and great speakers like economist Dr. William Strauss and Les Otten of Maine Energy Systems aren’t enough, come meet your new crew. Come and get a handle on all of the changes and give your voice to what else we need to do.

This will be my first opportunity to spend significant time with many of you and I really would like get your opinion on NEPPA’s direction.