^{March 31, 2025} A Day in the Life: General Foreman Robert Blaney

When talking with Robert Blaney, it quickly becomes clear he loves what he does. In college, the Great Southwestern (GSWC) general foreman studied psychology and medicine before renouncing that career path and seeking one he had more interest in and could get involved with quickly. This brought him to Northwest Linemen College in his hometown in California. After graduating, Robert – or “Blaney” as he’s known in the field – travelled around performing transmission work and gaining experience in a variety of states before landing at Great Southwestern, where he quickly joined its apprenticeship program.

“My whole goal was to get into the trade, keep travelling around while I worked as an apprentice, become a journeyman lineworker, and finally plant some roots somewhere.” he said.

And that’s exactly what he did. Read on to learn more about what brought Robert to his role as general foreman and chairman of the Safety Committee, the values he brings to the job site as a leader, and his experience performing live-line barehand work.

Q: Describe your experience in GSWC’s apprenticeship program?

The apprenticeship program rounded out my skills because there were areas in which I wasn’t very knowledgeable since I worked on transmission lines my whole career up until that point. Learning underground distribution and substation work, even though I’m not going to do it every day, still gives me a sense of what needs to be done if I find myself in that situation. The program made me better equipped for any situation that could arise in the industry. And that’s always what I’ve wanted – not just be good at one thing but be good at as many things as I can.

Q: How did your career grow after graduating from the apprenticeship program?

I became a journeyman lineworker, and shortly after, Great Southwestern started doing the live-line barehand work that we do now. I was part of the first barehand crew the company had in Texas, and we’ve been doing it since 2019, so I ended up becoming knowledgeable about that aspect of the trade. From there, I became a foreman for two years and was promoted to my current role as general foreman about three months ago.

Q: What was it like to be a part of GSWC’s first live-line barehand crew?

I’d heard of barehand work before and I’d seen it done maybe once in the four or five years I’d worked before then. Barehand work was always kind of a big deal, so getting the opportunity to learn and perform that type of work was a cool experience, and it has treated me well by helping me develop a new skill set and advance my career.

It was a lot like the apprenticeship because there was class work to learn the different steps and precautions you take when dealing with energized transmission lines. After classroom learning, we trained in the yard doing simulated energized work. This is before MYR Group formed the Live Line Academy, which is now also located in Alvarado, Texas.

Q: What’s the benefit of being trained in live-line barehand work?

Energized work is just a good skill for lineworkers to learn, and it’s definitely good for rounding out your skills.

Robert Blaney

I feel like the industry is turning towards energized work. If utilities don’t have to take outages, it benefits everyone. The longer you can keep the line energized, the more profitable it’s going to be. Energized work is just a good skill for lineworkers to learn, and it’s definitely good for rounding out your skills. Barehand work may have been newer when I first entered the industry, but now I see and hear about it a lot more. I think that it’s becoming a more prevalent way of working on transmission lines for certain customers.

Q: Describe your role as a chairman of GSWC’s Safety Committee and explain the group’s purpose?

The Safety Committee is a collection of field workers along with some office employees that come together to see if there are any changes we want to see in our safety culture. We’re kind of like a liaison with leadership regarding safety in the field. Our goal is to make everything as safe as possible for everyone on a job site. We like involving a lot of perspectives from the field because they’re out there day to day in the nitty gritty of it all. If they see things that they think could be improved, that’s what we all come together for.

Safety is about practicing what we preach.

Robert Blaney, Chairman of the GSWC Safety Committee

For example, we have the short service employee (SSE) program for new employees, who wore green hard hats. Last year we discovered that green hard hats are extremely hot for the crews in the summertime. We got a laser thermometer and discovered that the temperature on the inside of a green hard hat compared to a lighter colored hard hat is about 30 degrees hotter.

I then put together a presentation for our leadership team. The initiative led to our company changing the green hard hats to a lighter yellow. Now we still have the benefits of the SSE program for the identification, but not at the detriment of potentially overheating the crews.

Q: How do you make sure safety is at the core of everything that your team does?

Safety is about practicing what we preach. We can’t tell everyone that we need them to be safe but then take shortcuts ourselves or allow them to happen. It’s about making sure that we identify and address instances that need correction and not let things slide. Safety is also about mitigating as much as you can before anything even happens and making sure your controls are in place. It’s important to teach everyone this attitude toward safety and let people know that safety is paramount to everything we do.