OPGW Splicing Fundamentals Part 2

We talk with TJ Pate about what makes OPGW fiber splicing different, from calibration discipline to enclosure build quality that holds up for decades. We also get practical about tools, training paths, and the safety mindset required when fiber lives alongside power. 

• splicing OPGW with a “right the first time” standard 
• building clean trays for easier adds and troubleshooting 
• why splicer readings can mislead without verification 
• warm-up time and frequent arc calibration habits 
• OPGW splice cases, heavy cans, and furcation workflows 
• handling stainless steel buffer tubes without breaking fiber 
• specialty tools like tube straighteners and grinding wheels 
• using colored zip ties for durable tube identification 
• adapting to 16-color fiber codes and mixed tube counts 
• how to enter OPGW work through hands-on training 
• improving OTDR setup skills beyond auto mode 
• daily safety briefings, hydration, wildlife, and grounding checks 
• how lockout tagout differs around utility power lines 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to week two, where we continue our conversation about OPGW with TJ Pate. This week we pick up on talking about the things you need to do to get into OPGW, what kind of traits, what type of skills. Let's listen to the show.

Splicing OPGW Without Second Chances

SPEAKER_01 0:39

So now we know what OPGW is. Let's talk about the part that uh every fiber technician, they either love this or they fear this, or sometimes love and fear it at the same time. Um, splicing fiber. Splicing fiber, that's always the fun thing. What's some of the biggest challenges that you find when it comes to splicing OPGW?

SPEAKER_00 0:59

My biggest challenge when splicing OPGW is knowing that it has to be right the first time. You know, when I build my tray out, I always have slack, but it looks better if I don't have to redo a splice. I don't have the little hangers, that one little loop that's shorter, you know, because I've got three whole loops going around the whole tray. If I can have them all looking as nice and neat as I can and professional, the fiber is just gonna last longer. Especially if someone else has to come in behind me, it's gonna be a simpler troubleshooting. It's gonna be a simpler ad. You know, if they say, hey, we're gonna take 24 strands and send them east or send them north, well, there's the 24 strands we need. It's gonna be simpler for them to go into. And knowing you can't you can't trust your splicer. You can trust your splicer for to a degree, you know, and you always want to get the lowest splice loss you can get. You know, goose eggs, double zeros, 0.00 is what everybody wants to, you know, go for. But I had an instance today that I got a call yesterday. Hey, one of my splices was bad. And I looked back on my splicing history and I saw the splice and it was a.02 well within tolerance. But it ended up being a 1.1 dB loss at the splice. And it's it's a fluke, it happens. You know, you you always want to shoot for your optimal splices. So I came back in, um, art calibrated my splicer this morning, which I do um, I personally do every morning when I before I start splicing, and then at lunch, after about four hours of the splicer being on, or every 48 strands, I'll take the five minutes, and actually only takes a couple, to do another art calibration. Because as the day changes, humidity, barometric pressure, temperature inside the splice lab, the conditions will change. So I'll do another art calibration. And that's also recommended by Sumatomo. I use a Sumatomo splicer. I'll I love my Sumatomo splicer.

SPEAKER_01 2:52

I mean, the equipment warms up too. I mean, you start at the beginning of the day, it's nice and well, not, you know, it's cool because I've been sitting in the truck overnight, but then after you start burning, you know, burning fibers, you know, it's good the equipment heats up and that that needs that adjustment. That's that's actually a great tip.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Yep, and I do allow my splicer 10 minutes of warm-up time. I'll let it, I'll turn it on and let it sit there for 10 minutes before I do anything, before I even art calibrate it. Because it needs that time to turn on to level out, just like with your OTDR. Before you do shots, you're supposed to let it rest and calibrate and you know, come online and be still for 10 minutes. So it you know, activates to the conditions that it's in. So, you know, do my art calibrations and then splice. But I still had one that was that was not within standards. So re-spliced it, ended up being, I think that one was a dot 07 splice when we brief shot it um this after I re-spliced it this morning. Um, I mean, I had two more that were out of R spec. You know, R spec is a dot one for a splice. I had two more that I needed to re-splice because they were uh one was a dot one one eight and the other one was a was a dot three oh nine. I was appalled. I'm like, I don't do this kind of work, but I mean, no one's perfect. So I redid them, came out beautiful. We were well within our tolerance, and uh we we moved and we moved along with the day.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah,

Heavy Splice Cans And Furcation

SPEAKER_01 4:15

when I was I did a uh tour through the JATC for um northern Nevada. Uh was that I was in Vegas for I can't remember why I was out there. I was out there or something. Was it a Bixie show, maybe? I think, yeah, I think it was Bixie Beyond. Bixie Beyond, yeah. So I went out there and I met with Matt and he gave me a tour of his facility, and he actually showed me one of the one of the OPGW splice cases, and it's it's totally different than a splice case that you would normally use. Uh can you can you touch a little bit on that? Like, you know, what are some of the challenges of dealing with that? And and if you happen to have a picture of one, send it to me and I'll put it in the in the video, like right here.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, and I'll send you a picture of the OptiGuard that we use. Um, that was an SBO1 can. So it is it's round. Yep, it's about this big, and it's lead. It is heavy as all get out. But the biggest challenge we're doing with SBO1 is your service loop inside is all furcated. So you have your stainless steel buffer tube coming inside and with your connector, but then you have you have to put your fiber, you have to pull off your stainless steel tube, which mind you, which haven't talked about this, is that stainless tube is actually wound inside the center of the fiber, so it's wavy, right? You have to straighten that out with a straightener manually. So you straighten that stainless steel buffer tube before you crack it to open it up, which is the most nerve-wracking part because when you score it, when you go to crack it, you literally have to just take it and break it. You can break fiber, and it happens. I've done it. It's very easy to do. But that's a two-man job is to pull that stainless steel buffer tube off, and then you actually fill up your your frication tube, which is a clear tube, and you fill it up with alcohol, not regular alcohol, fiber-rated alcohol, because we all know regular alcohol will attract moisture. We don't want to do it. We use a you know, a proper fiber alcohol, fill up the tube, and then you 99%, and then you float your fiber through that tube because the the alcohol being there lets you push the fiber all the way through and float it through that entire tube so you can make that round inside the SBO1 can before you come into your splice trays. That's the biggest hurdle. That was one of the biggest things with SBO1s is all that frication you have to do. With an object guard, it's not as complicated. We've got that down to a science. You know, it's only a 48 48-inch piece of clear tube is our frication tube. And you'll be able to see that in the picture that hopefully is put down here. Um, you know, and y'all.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

So where do I go buy one of those stainless steel tube stretchers? Is it is it like buying a copper cable stretcher that's sold at the same place?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

It's the same place you get your box, your bucket adopting it all on the same shelf. Those those are hard to come by, but you know, they are collectors' islands.

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Yes, they are. All right, so so it sounds like a lot of different challenges. So, I mean,

Specialty Tools And Smarter Labeling

SPEAKER_01 7:12

other than you know, you know, fiber checks they're used to using, you know, No Nicks or Miller's or or stuff like that. What kind of specialty tools? You just mentioned one, the scoring the tube. What other kind of specialty tools do you need working on OPGW?

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Um well, you got your tube straightener, and actually it's it's a bunch of uh round rollers that literally will straighten the tube for you so you can straighten it out, and that's done manually. You know, you need a you need a grinding wheel because you have to you have to you you slowly grind down and grind through your outer strands, and then you break them off because you don't want to cut all the way through them, and then you you take your time to when you get a piece of steel strand, you get about three-quarters of the way through it, and then you crack it off. A little more, crack it off, and that's how you work your way down through the layers of an OPGW. And we'll put a picture up of the multiple layers on an OPGW here in the screen so everybody can little little visuals. I'm a big visual person, I gotta see it. Heat gun, because you have to put heat shrink on there. We do a heat shrink to attach our furcation tube to our stainless steel buffer tube. So we put a piece of heat shrink on, and one thing that we have are colored zip ties that people wouldn't think of because our blue tube, tube number one, will have strands one through 48. Tube number two will have 49 through 96 on a 96 strand. It's only two buffer tubes. Well, we used to ride on there with a pen, blue and orange, until it dawned on me one day. I'm like, why aren't we just using blue and orange zip ties?

SPEAKER_01 8:46

Well, that's how they used to do outside plant copper. They used to have the use for the splicers, they used to have the the specialty tie wraps for each one of the binding groups.

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah. Yes, that's where I got that from. I'm like, why don't we just order some blue and orange, green-brown um tubes? I mean uh zip ties. So we ordered them all, and that's our new standard. Is we just use the color of the zip tie. You just look down and you're like, oh.

SPEAKER_01 9:13

That makes a lot that makes a lot more sense because you and I both know Sharpies get rubbed off. Sharpies, you know, you know, when they get uh attacked by UV, they fade. You know, Sharpie's not a permanent way of labeling anything. So I think the tie wraps, I think that's a great idea. A great idea.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

And that came that really came into play when we ran into 16-strand buffer tube for the first time. Uh two years ago, right after a uh Bixie conference, ran into 16-strand fiber. Uh sat through a class talking about ratification of the 16-strand color code. I was like, awesome. Like this is good to know. I'll see this in a few years until it makes it out the outside plan. We came to a new splice point. We opened up the end of the fiber, and all of a sudden the technician works with me and said, Hey, we have three buffer tubes. And I said, We have what? I'm sorry. Three buffer tubes? He's like, I think they might have installed the wrong fiber. Because the first thing went through my head was that's a 36 strand. 12 per. Ended up not. We ended up, we opened it up and we counted the strands, and it was 16 strands. I said, pick me. I know that color country. I love magenta 10 and lime. And yes, there you go. You see? And overcoming that, that wasn't a wasn't a problem, that was an opportunity for success. And that's what we really did with that was being able to graph standard 12 strand buffer tube to 16-strand buffer tube was the big challenge. And what we came up with and the solution for it really was simplistic in its simplicity, and it made it simple to understand. That's where our color zip ties really came into play.

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, I that you know, I learned that the 16-color code from you, and you called me out at a uh, I was in one of your I was in one of the classes, you called me out, and I can I kind of halfway remembered some of them. And I'm I'm the kind of person, you embarrassed me once, uh, that's done. That's done. I committed it to memory. And uh so now every every time I teach a class in my day job, I always ask the students, hey, are you aware there's 16 colors in the fiber object code? And of course, I usually get like two or three that say yes, but the rest say no. And then I say, Okay, here's the additional colors olive, magenta, tan, and lime. Because if I say it enough times, it'll blaze on my memory. So the next time TJ quizzes me on it, I got it. I got it.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

And you know that's gonna happen. You know that's gonna happen.

SPEAKER_01 11:33

I'd be disappointed if you didn't. I'd be disappointed if you didn't.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

And we'll be I will be talking about that again at Bixie Beyond this year in August at uh in Vegas at Bixie Beyond in Vegas. We're gonna be speaking on that again. I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

Yeah, I won't be at Bixie Beyond this year. I've I have a conflict with my training schedule, so I won't be able to attend Bixie Beyond this year. But I'm already you know looking at uh the the winter conference for next year, and uh so I'm gonna have my new director of operations come with me, help me do all that kind of stuff so she can focus on taking the pictures and running the camera, and I can focus on doing the you know being the being the the personality of the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

Yeah. Yes. Because hopefully we can get Nolan, your normal camera guy, we can get him in the cabling skills challenge. I'm really excited to get him.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

He wants to challenge. I know he wants to do that. He mentioned that right now he's really working hard on getting his RCDD. Um he's in the he's in my current study group, as you know, because you're in it as well, too. But um, he's in there and he's trying to get his RCD. And I I think that's why he wants to get that before he goes to the cable skills challenge, if I remember him saying that right. Yeah, I do too. I get it. I get it too. So, you know, let me ask

Breaking Into OPGW Without Shortcuts

SPEAKER_01 12:44

you this. So I gotta assume that, you know, your day job, your company job, you know, when they're looking for people. Let me ask you this are you guys having a shortage of people like the rest of the industry is?

SPEAKER_00 12:55

Not we're so niche right now that it's it's not really a shortage, but it is a shortage because finding people with outside plan experience and inside plan experience is the hard part because we have to do a little bit of both. Because when we go to support a site, we have to support everything from the land switches to our outside plant switches, we we support it all. You know, today I was hooking up phones, you know, at a at one of our offices because that's just one of my tasks, is one of the things we do. And finding someone that has done a little bit of both is is a challenge because that we need more, we need more people in the industry. We honestly do.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

Without a doubt. So if there's somebody listening to this who's currently doing you know regular structure cabling stuff, maybe maybe enterprise fiber optic networks, maybe a little bit OSP, um could they enter the OPGW world? What would what's what are some of the mistakes that they could possibly make by trying to get into OPGW?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

To enter that, you would I would probably get on with a company that is currently doing OPGW. And that, I mean, it's in hands-on training is is your gonna be your best friend because I'm not aware of any of anywhere that does like legit hands-on training. Hey, this is how you prep OPGW, other than manufacturers, will come, will actually come to you and say, okay, we're gonna train you how to do this new fiber, you know, because they're always changing OPGW fiber designs. Because you have OPGW with normal buffer tube in it, um, a LimaCore. That's it, it's one center tube, and all your normal plastic buffer tubes are inside of it. But then you have ones like ours that are stainless steel buffer tube. So finding someone that already does OPGW so you can get that experience is probably gonna be your best bet. Or you have a training center that does offer hands-on OPGW. This is how you prep it, and this is how you you learn what it is, and you do's and you don't.

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Yeah, I'm like, I'm like you. Um I'm not aware of anybody who teaches OP uh outside of the manufacturers. Uh, I know Bixie doesn't really have they don't I don't think they even mention OPGW. I don't know if FOA does. I'd have to ask Lee that question. Um and I don't even know if Light Brigade does it or not. I know I know Light Brigade does a lot more, a lot more outside plant fiber, cable TV fiber, and stuff like that, but I don't know if they get into the OPGW stuff.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

They do. They actually have a an expert OPGW expert on staff who's been doing it over 25 years. Um he does teach OPGW classes, and you know, the the they have different levels of it. Because with these strands, and something that I learned here just a year ago was once they pull this fiber in, it has to sit for 24 hours to 48 hours before you can do anything with it. Because as they're putting tension on it, installing it, once they put it in the shoes and it rests, it will the coil it will pull back on itself. The fiber will will recoil inside of the tubes, so you have to allow it 24 to 48 hours to splice, to to settle before you can splice that actually well.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

You know, that actually brings a question to my mind that's not in our questions I submitted you in advance, but we live in Florida. And you could be like like today, it could be 95 degrees, 115 with humidity outside, but then it could be like 70 degrees at night. If you got 40 miles of fiber, I've got to imagine that temperature change causes that fiber to expand and contract.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yes, and it's got to, you know, and especially with the aluminum and the stainless steel, there there is that expansion and retraction with heat and cold. So it does happen, but it's built into the fiber to allow that room inside the tube for it to move and go back and forth. But we have to accommodate for that, knowing we're gonna have movement. So we have to plan for that. So yeah, it does, it does move a little bit, and there's measures that we put in place to make sure it doesn't, you know, pull out of the connector. Um, there's an actual like a strength member inside that we crimp over on support to hold it in. So if something, if you do have a lot of pressure on it, it does its best to keep it from coming out of the housing and putting the pressure on the fiber itself. Yep. Or getting caught on a construction truck because it's too close to a construction site and somebody in the fiber was hanging down too low. And I had that happen to me a few weeks ago.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

My my dad used to own a uh dump truck company. He had 10 dump trucks, and one of his guys pulled off a job site with the bed partially raised, and he he tore a uh, it wasn't fire, he tore a copper cable off of a off of a pole. And I I was in low voltage probably for like five years at this time, and and he said to me, He goes, Look, I don't want to follow someone's insurance company. Can you go out there and fix that for me? Like, nope, can't do that, Dad. Sorry. Number one, I don't have the skills. Number two, that's a service provider cable. I can't touch that cable. Yeah. That kind of uh he showed me pictures that I'll see if I can't dig it up. I I know I have a picture over here somewhere, but it was a rather large cable, and I'm like, yeah, I don't want nothing to do with that. None whatsoever. Um so let me ask you this is there a difference in OPGW here in Florida versus maybe OPGW that might be installed in, say, like Michigan, where they got freezing temperatures? Or is it the same?

SPEAKER_00 18:08

No, it's it's it's the same. You know, that we have water block, you know, we have the gel. A lot of it has the gel for the water block in it, so it won't freeze. So it's it's widely used all across the across the United States and across the industry. This the standards are kind of the same. What does change is your transition cable. You know, if you're duck fiber or if you're going to an ADSS, a self-sustaining uh fiber that would be like for traditional underbuild, you know, that you'd see it and it you know holds itself. You put it to a messenger wire and lash it in and it supports itself. Um, that's your biggest changes because you have duck fiber that's you know, has the powder. It's a dry, it's a dry tube, which I mean I love dry tubes. They're easy. You know, the gel field can be a little more challenging, especially getting your you know, your tubing off a gel field can can really be challenging, especially this outside plant, because they do not want water touching them. We all know water, it doesn't make sense why water would be enemy for fiber, but it will degradate, you know, will affect the fiber and cause it to degradate. And, you know, with the components of the fiber, it it that's why water block is such a big deal in making it happen or keeping it dry is our biggest.

Future Fiber And Staying Curious

SPEAKER_01 19:17

You know, some of the new things coming down the pike is holocore fiber and multi-core fiber. Are you hearing any kind of rumblings about those new types of fiber being implemented as OPGW?

SPEAKER_00 19:32

I haven't not yet, and I've I've been meaning to ask the representative from NCAB or um, you know, AFL like, hey, are y'all gonna implement that in outside plan, you know, in OPGW? A lot of the holocorps and the multi-core is coming in the data centers because they just have to have so that their footprint is so small for a fiber that they need as much packed into that footprint as possible, you know, and that that multi-core is coming. I we haven't heard of it yet. I'm excited to to deal with it and be a part of it, though. I'm really excited if we do roll some out, that would be a fantastic, and I'll be taking all kinds of pictures and notes.

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the multi-core absolutely data centers, more so data centers. But I would really think for what you're doing, holocore, you probably see more of that than what you're doing because it has a higher index of refraction than regular fiber does, and that's that's gonna decrease the latency and stuff. And that's you know, you're you know, when you're talking about latency on a thousand-foot fiber, you know, okay, no big deal. Latency on a 50-mile cable.

SPEAKER_00 20:36

Yeah, or a 70-kilometer run, you know? And I mean, that's about what a DWDM signal will go without regeneration, is 70 kilometers. And holocor, you know, there's nothing there to impede it. There's no glass, it's it's air, it's empty. So your attenuation per kilometer is lower.

unknown 20:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

I mean, I wish I knew the attenuation per kilometer on holocor fiber. I think it's ridiculously low.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

It is. It is. I'm I'm trying to find more information on it because I want to do I want to do a couple podcast episodes on holocor fiber and multi-core fiber. I had John Bruno on. Did you see that? I had John Bruno on from FIS uh, I guess about a month ago. And we talked a little bit about that, but I want to find, I'm I'm doing some research trying to find uh guests to come on the show to talk about it more in depth and and maybe even try to give us an idea. Are we looking at one year down the road, five years down the road, or ten years down the road? Because it's I have a feeling it's closer to one year down the road to five years than anything else. And and uh and that's why I tell people you've got to be a constant learner in this industry because you know it because it w there's always new stuff coming out. And you know, if you'd have told me I first got started doing you know uh fiber, you know, 30 plus years ago when I started I was in the I did copper for 10, then went to fiber, I I would have laughed at you. Multi core fiber, what yeah, whatever. Whatever.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

Well we also thought we would never need More than like six or eight strands. Like, who needs who needs a 12 strand?

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Now we're we also thought that we didn't need hard drives bigger than 20 megabits. Yes. And now when you take a picture with your camera, that's one picture. That's a low-risk picture.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

That's a low risk. I mean, it's a low-risk picture. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Exactly.

Skills That Make You Hireable

SPEAKER_01 22:20

I want to dive more into this career path part. Yeah, so so we already talked about, you know, there's not there's not a whole lot of training out there for OPGW. I'm going to try to do some research other than maybe going through a J A T C. I should talk to Matt. I bet you he knows of somebody. Um I'm going to try to find more information on career paths for people for holocore fiber. But you know, you know, so again, if there's a technician out there right now who only does enterprise fiber, knowing that they can't really get the training, what kind of skills can they develop now to make them more attractive to a company who might be doing OPGD?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

I would say your splicing and what your trays look like. Take a lot of pride in your tray prep and when your splices are done and your and your holders are put in, all your everything is built out inside your tray, what does it look like? Does it look like a hot mess? Is everything nice and organized? Do you have a lot of outliers? Do you have a lot of, you know, the the one that one fiber that's a little bit shorter than the rest? You know, if you focus on the perfection and the prep work, knowing my splices are as good as they possibly can be, you know, because all we we know you strip, you clean, you cleave, and it's straight into the splicer. You know, there is no touching it. There's there, you don't do anything else, you know. Because that in face is never cleaner than right after you cleave it. That is the cleanest that in face will ever be.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Right.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

And that's where I would focus on is the details. The devil is in the details, especially with fiber.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

Um I have a good solid foundation of fundamentals. Um and I think I would add to that, I think I would add to that, because you've already kind of touched base on it. Um start learning how to read and interpret um optical loss test sets and and OTDR traces more, more depth than what you typically do in now. I think those would probably be the two areas to focus on.

SPEAKER_00 24:19

And understanding how to set up an OTDR, you know, um, don't just put it on auto. You've got to know your lengths because you can tweak the settings in OTDR to have it tell you kind of whatever you wanted it to say. But if you know what you're doing, you're not gonna get those ghost reflections on those shorter runs. Even with a launch reel, you're gonna get ghost reflections. Well, if you know how to dial it back, you know, and not have it shoot 4,000 foot on a short run. Well, I'm only gonna I only need to shoot a 1,500 foot. And doing those changes to dial in your settings in your OTDR are gonna be critical because there's times that I don't need to, I don't need to look in the first 20,000 feet. My event is out in the 35 to 40,000 foot range. Well, that's what I need to set my settings on is to, I'm gonna blow by all my close stuff. I really want to look at what's out there around the 35 to 38,000 foot mark. That's where I want to see the clearest. And it's the best way I know that I've been told on looking at setting up your distances is where do you want your hourglass to be? Do I want to hone in on the first, you know, 15,000 foot, or do I need to really look out here? But sometimes you need to look at the whole segment, your whole fiber segment your whole fiber span. Well, that's a different setting altogether, you know, and and how long you apply your OTDR shot for. It might not be a five-second shot, it might be a 45 to a minute shot to look at it all because you want to look at all your events on your span. And understanding the why is the most critical part. Is why am I doing this? Okay, well, it's gonna make you a better technician in the long run.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

What personality traits make somebody really good for doing OPGW?

SPEAKER_00 26:06

Uh, if you have a little bit of OCD, I'm not even gonna lie. And and you're you're a perfectionist in the details, and knowing like our philosophy is me and the gentleman I work with every day, Chris Roy, which is a fantastic technician, if the fiber doesn't move, it can't break.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Right.

SPEAKER_00 26:27

So if everything is secure in your spliced enclosure, it's not gonna move. There's there's nothing weird, like something can't shift, it's not gonna break. It's gonna be there for the next 20 years. We work on OPGW that's been installed for 23, 24 years now. The only time, the only reason we have an issue with it is because somebody breaks it and it's not a natural break, it's a man-made break. Um so it it really is, it's all about your prep work. And you're you need the personality of I'm gonna do it right even when no one else is looking. Because I know it needs to be done this way, and I know why it needs to be done this way. Is it gonna take me a couple extra minutes? Yes, but the shortcut is not worth it in the long run. It's just really it's really not worth it.

SPEAKER_01 27:09

Yeah, because you might be 10 miles out in them swamp with nobody without your supervisor looking over your shoulder. Right? And and do you really want to have to make another trip? Call out the call out the crew to mow the lawn and put down the path, you go back out to that swamp again. I'm checking you, yeah. Yes. That that that call that that call for a rolling of a truck is gonna be super expensive. And then trust me, your supervisor is gonna be paying attention sometimes. They gotta go back to fix something that you didn't do right. So it'd be even clear.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Oh, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah, one of the things that you and I talked, because I didn't realize OPGW's been around that long. I thought that was I thought it was something relatively new. But it's you said 20 something years or something? I I did not know that. I learned something new in today's show. There

Safety Briefings Around Power Lines

SPEAKER_01 27:48

you go. Um one of the biggest differences um between what you're doing now and what the enterprise fiber guy does now, again, they both, you know, both are uh focused on safety, obviously. But I think the safety culture in your environment, the OPGW, is like on steroids compared to the safety on you know, a guy doing enterprise, right? So, what would a typical daily safety briefing look like when you're doing OPGW stuff?

SPEAKER_00 28:20

So our normal safety briefing, if one of the first things we conquer, best being in Florida, is we have a hydration monitor. You know, somebody, and I'm normally that guy that would be like, hey, have you had a bottle of water in the last two hours? Have you had a Gatorade? I will I will go around and just hand everybody a Gatorade. Listen, if you don't, if you want to be a grown man and not drink the Gatorade and be a hard head, that's cool. You be you. But I really want to make sure everybody stays hydrated, especially in Florida heat. That that's a safety. Um being aware of what season it is, you know. Winter, we're not really worried about snakes. Middle of the summer, we're worried about snakes, cotton mouths, um, rattlesnakes. Um, there are a number of poisonous, venomous snakes in outflorida that we need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

Um gopher holes, turtle, turtle, tortoise holes, tortoise, ground, tortoise, tortoise, yes, tortoise holes.

SPEAKER_00 29:10

Because you're walking, you won't realize there's a big hole in front of you that you're just about to walk through on accident. Like it's nothing on purpose. You just sometimes they're really well hidden.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

I've done that in my own yard. I've done that in my own yard. Yeah, I couldn't imagine being out where there's tall grass and not seeing the stuff.

SPEAKER_00 29:27

Yep. And uh we also talk about if the line is in service. So if that if that fiber line and that power line that our fiber is running with, if it's in service or if it's out of service. Because even if even if it we know it's out of service and there's no power on it, we treat it like a hotline. Always. We always assume there's power on it. We make sure our bonding is good and we always check our bonding conductors and our bonds that we apply and make sure they're within code and we look for any issues with those ground, with those ground leads. Right. Because we don't want there to be an issue. And if you take the five minutes to check your equipment before you start working, it's really that five minutes goes a long way in somebody's safety.

SPEAKER_01 30:07

Would the would the lockout tag out procedures look differently with OPGW than they would with enterprise?

SPEAKER_00 30:12

Yeah, because we're not in charge directly of the power on the power line. We depend on the you know, the substation text or the line outage to be out. You know, the contractors when we take the line out, there won't be there won't be power on it. And that whole process is a whole different process that we're not a part of. Right. But we know you know it's out and it's tagged out for a reason, and that's handled by a different division. But you know, enterprise level, you don't have to worry about that. There's you're you're not you don't have that worry running inside of a building to another building.

Wrap Up And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 30:44

TJ, what a fantastic show. I appreciate you coming on today. And uh make sure to send me them pictures so I can put them in the in the thing and and uh hopefully uh I'll get to hang out with you before Bixie winter. You know.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Yes, that would be exciting. I look forward to I really appreciate you having me on, Chuck. And uh I always love talking about OPW. You know, it's you know, I really enjoy doing it. You know, I really enjoy what I do, and uh it's just it's a lot of fun. I'll afford to I will make sure to give you these pictures and uh we can get some good visuals for everybody that watches us so they can see exactly what's going on.