High voltage learning during the Christchurch earthquakes

Tuesday 1 st February Before quakes and demolition         After demolition Today we were working at the demolition site of Manchester Courts on the corner of Manchester and Hereford Streets. This was considered to be one of the iconic casualty sites of the magnitude 7.1 earthquake of September 4 2010. This building was also the first 'skyscraper' in the Southern Hemisphere, being of brick construction and 10 storeys tall. The building was demolished due to concerns about its structural integrity. During demolition, an electrical kiosk was damaged, and the decision was made to move the kiosk location and replace it with a new one. Traffic lights and street lights were damaged also. I was working today with Ivor, Reece, Jeff and Jamie. Connetics, being owned by Orion (Christchurch's electricity network owner) and having a staff complement of 250, has specialist digging crews and machinery. This is extremely useful as the cable jointing crews can concentr...

Well, I've had my first day! Today I had my induction meeting with Diane Archer at 8am at Connectics. The induction covered OSH and supply industry regulations lined up with Connectics' own OSH rules. The meeting took one and a half hours. After the meeting, I caught up with Phil Duns, the Underground operations manager, who organised me to go to an 11kV joining site near Christchurch airport. Onsite, I met Chris and Nick, who were working to join a 300mm2 aluminium 11kV 3 phase conductor. The actual join was an engineering masterpiece, which Chris and Nick connected using an instruction sheet that came with a $1500 kit. Precision is paramount, and the guys made it look easy. I asked to have the instruction sheets after, which I pocketed for further reference! Pics are below, click on them to see them enlarged. The first stripping The joiners Nearly finished Final product After we did the join, we went further down the road to a kiosk where we had to ...