Shipping the Goods

Gratuitous pic of a truck replacing
a line on a narrow street.  Photo by Kathe.

"We have scavenged all the materials we can from damaged poles and lines.  As of Tuesday, we will be out of materials to continue work on the electrical lines in the city."

The Mayor of Villalba, Puerto Rico, was talking to a group of officials from Puerto Rico Power, FEMA and the Corps.  He shared the extent of the damage done, and what remains to be done.  Today marks the 100th day since the storm hit.

Villalba, for those of you not familiar with the geography of the island, is not the most remote town in Puerto Rico.

The utilities official agreed with the mayor.  If materials were on hand, 60% of the lights in the village would already be energized.  And then everyone turned and looked at the representative from the Corps.

Arms folded.  Well?

This scene has played itself out in similar scenes all across the island.  Because of a host of logistical problems with getting stuff shipped to the island, teams from every contractor and subcontractor have taken valuable (read:expensive) time to recycle for reuse any available scrap from the lines that were destroyed.  Wire coiled and set aside.  Boxes filled with scavenged connectors and insulators and bolts.  Stacks of crossarms.

We have been struggling since right after the storm to get material where it needs to go.

We have a group of guys who we refer to as the BOM Squad.  BOM - Bill of Materials - is the physical stuff we need to do the work.  From day one, the BOM Squad has had the hardest job on the island. They are responsible for moving tens of thousands of power poles, hundreds of transmission towers, thousands of insulators, hundreds of transformers, wire, (LOTS of wire), and tons of nuts, bolts, crimps, and other stuff with exciting names like "Fuse Link 140A dsv Universal Fast" or "Cutout KVMAS 200A" - and getting it all where it needs to go.  (Fun fact: there are chainsaws in the mix, too.)

Here's the thing: If you don't have all of the pieces, then you don't connect the electricity, and you don't turn on the refrigerator.  And people fold their arms at you and stare.  Well?

The BOM Squad made their order based on very early information about what the needs were, with a lot of uncertainty in what the actual needs were.  And there have been countless bottlenecks:

Bottleneck at the manufacturing facility.  Much of the stuff we are getting in every day is stamped with a production date from last month.  That is unheard of.  We have been literally having stuff manufactured, rolled off the assembly line/out of the kiln, stamped, and immediately put on a truck.

Bottleneck at the port, where the stuff was supposed to be loaded on barges.  Eventually, we moved all of the stuff to a different port. And shipped it out from there.

Bottleneck at the port on the island.  Taking the items off the barge, putting them down in the yard, opening the containers, cataloging, counting, repacking, setting them on trucks, distributing them to the laydown yards.

Bottleneck at the warehouse.

They have been streamlining, and the process is better.  But there was no material on hand.  EVERYTHING had to be shipped.  What is worse, original estimates have changed, and items have been added.  With no change in the timeline.



And then how do you determine who gets priority for receiving the stuff?  No matter what you decide (First come/first served?  Big city first?  Industry first?), you will be charged with favoring one group over another.

'The Corps favors the contractors they hired, and are not giving material to the locals who need it.'
'The Corps is favoring one contractor over another.'
'The Corps is favoring the locals over the contractors, who cannot perform according to the contract if they don't get the stuff.'
'The Corps is favoring one region/one village/one town over another.'

Now, two months after the order was made, we are starting to see an increase in the stream of goods that are coming to the island.  Every day, we are counting containers of material, hundreds of poles, and getting more stuff into the hands of the contractors and workers who can majically turn bits of metal into electricity in the homes of those who need it. And they won't have to rely exclusively on cannibalized material to do it.

We are answering the question from the Mayor of Villalba.  We are ordering material and providing it as quickly, distributing it as widely, and helping as many people as we can.  As soon as we are told of the need for specific elements, we order them and get them in.  As they are received, we turn them over to the team needing the material.  To get them back to work.

The trickle of BOM is turning into a stream.  And soon, God willing, the stream will turn into a river.  As that happens, we can get it all into the hands of those who can bring power to the people.

Estamos aqui.

Even in Villalba.

Changing Horses

"Do NOT change my metrics on me."

The Chief of Engineers for USACE - our 3-Star General boss - looked down the table at the Colonel in charge of bringing power back to the island.  His tone brooked no argument.  None came.

"I understand that you want to figure out how many customers are coming online - how many houses there are with electricity as a result of the work we are doing here.  But if that becomes your measuring stick, then I am in the position of changing what my measuring stick is.  The result will be that what I promised is something that we no longer track or value.

"Stay the course."

"Yes, sir."

LTG Semonite has a good point, and it is one we fight every day.  How do we measure the work we are doing?  And how do we communicate it?

Truth is, to the people in the village, to the press, to the governor, it is hard to see the value in metrics like Instant Max Load As Percentage of Historic Average Load.  But that is what we promised at the beginning, and it makes sense.  We are working to restore the system to its pre-disaster condition, with some additional safety and redundancy built in.  But our goal is to be able to demonstrate that we have achieved 95% of the electrical load on the system by the end of February.  That means that historically, Puerto Rico was generating around 2500MW of power and transmitting that across the grid, around the island.  Today, we have restored power to the whole system to the tune of 1700MW of power.  We are currently (see what I did there?) at 68% of the electrical load.

Most of that is going to the metro areas, to industry, and a fair amount of it is simply potential - not connected to the Last Mile at all.

Because we have been taking so much static (see what I did there?) in the press and from the local political folk, we are trying to translate our work into more understandable measuring sticks. Grid repair, no matter how you do it, is a difficult thing to measure.

Miles of lines is a meaningless measure.  Great, thank you Corps of Engineers, for adding ten miles of transmissionline.  When do I get to plug in my fridge?

Historic load, equally meaningless.  Puerto Rico's grid is at 75% of historic load?  Awesome, Corps of Engineers.  Well done.  Can I plug my fridge in tonight?

So we look for other ways of communicating it:

How many customers have lights?
What proportion of the island is lighted?
How much of each metro area has power?

But when we do, we stray from what we were supposed to do.  And the Chief has to remind us.  "Stay the course."

In not unrelated news, we are getting some resistance (see what I... never mind) about the work that we are doing.  The sister agency who is funding our work is considering removing all of the funding we have for distribution work - the lower-wattage lines - and making us focus on the high-power lines.

This is part of what we have been discussing all along.  What is our part in the overall effort?  When are we done?  Can we finish it in the time allotted and not leave the island with an asterisk?

If we make this change, then we will be looking at making a wholesale change at how we approach the remaining work.  We will not be responsible for the last mile.  We will not be doing the work to turn the electricity on in people's houses.  We will restore the grid, and leave the small crews from 'Industry" to complete the work.

But the mark remains on the wall.  95% still belongs to us, regardless of who has the charge (grins to himself at yet another electricity pun) of finishing up the distribution tasks.

Honoring my Dad on his birthday

Mac Lawton found a need in his community, and he worked diligently to address the need.  Young men who needed a man like Mac in their life found in him a powerful man who stopped everything he was doing, every week, to spend time with them.  His devotionals were personal and theologically sound, the food was plentiful and good, and the competition in basketball and volleyball was fun.

But what was clear through it all was his devotion.  He loved those boys.  He made them his own.  He shared his life with them.

I do not share that call.  As much as I loved going to the Palmetto Boys' Shelter (and later, the 567 Club) with him, working with teenaged boys is not my calling.

Nevertheless, honoring my dad is important to me.  Especially today.

Today would have been his 70th birthday. 

My whole life, Dad's birthday was celebrated at Charlie's Steakhouse, in Greenville, SC, eating the best, biggest steaks I have ever had.  We gathered to celebrate Grandmama's birthday (who was born on the 23rd) and Dad always got a box of Andes mints that he shared.  My memories of those celebrations is a powerful call to me - I have a strong desire to celebrate and be near to family.  That dinner always served to open the Christmas season for me.

And although I am celebrating his birthday in an odd way, I find myself thinking that he would be proud. Today, I worked with the Corps of Engineers Power Grid Restoration Office, working long hours to restore electricity to the people of Puerto Rico.  I am planning how to best approach the work - whether to continue to drive the focus on transmission lines (the high-energy lines) or to divide resources and cover more ground.  We are focusing on the work that will do the most good as quickly as possible, with the intent of bringing up lines so that people in remote areas can have electricity.  We track funding.  We track where the poles and wire and transformers and insulators are shipped to and from.

It does not feel like Christmas.  I am not with family.  I have not gone and done the dreaded shopping.  I do not come home to a stack of Christmas cards on my mantle.  I am not performing a Christmas program with a choir group, and it feels weird to sing carols in the office.  I am not doing any of the things that traditionally mark the season for me.

But in working diligently to fill a need that I see in the community, today, I honor Mac's memory.  I honor the coming of the Christ child in the manger by finding a way to make the lights stable.

Merry Christmas, y'all.  Happy birthday, Dad.  I miss you.

Estamos aqui.

Watering the Turf

I hate turf wars.

One of my jobs back in Vicksburg is to hold a monthly discussion session with people on how to collaborate.  My team pulls people together who are struggling to work together, helps them identify a common goal, and gets them talking.  Sometimes it is easy when we have an easily definable common goal.  Other times we have competing missions that make it impossible to do so.

But my job is to start people talking and sharing resources.

An simple example of something that worked this past year:  We had a significant re-org in our office, and we were thrown into a new group.  And the time with the boss is the scarce resource, and we were competing for it without discussing the problems among ourselves. We weren't talking.  There was no hostility.... but there was no relationship.

Individually, we were talking.  Some of us, anyway. But we needed to talk regularly.  And our weekly formal briefing meetings were not cutting it.

I instituted a CrockPot Thursday.

Every Thursday, I would put some large hunk of meat - pork, beef, chicken, wild boar, venison, sausage, whatever - into the pot.  And I would put in all of the supplemental pieces of deliciousness - potatoes, celery, carrots, pasta, kale, garlic, onions, and other stuff.  Most of the time I'd make a pico de gallo to accompany it.  And the vehicle for getting it in - tortillas, baguettes; sandwich bread, rolls... and the sour cream, mustard, hot sauce - we did it all.

The Last Mile

Where do we stop?

As a representative of the US Federal Government, I find it to be a significant question.

In my agency, we answer the question - in some form - every day.  The feds have nothing to do with paving your street.  The feds don't get into the business of trimming the trees on the railway lines, or throwing away garbage.  They don't make sure that your boat's slip is deep enough for your boat, or that your carport's roof doesn't leak.  For our day-to-day decisions, we have a concept of what comprises Federal Interest - what makes an investment to be one of national importance.  If it does not rise to that level, it might be nice to do, but it is not in the purview of the Federal Gummint.  (Unless Congress tells us that it is, which happens from time to time: see New Orleans' SELA project for an example.)

In times of disaster, however, those lines get blurred a lot.  We tend to do things in the wake of a disaster that we don't normally do, just to make it so people can get their lives re-started.  Things like blue roofs.  And debris cleanup.

And like my work - power restoration.  (Not usually a Corps mission)

But how far do we go to complete the mission?  Do we deliver electricity to the substation?  To the last transformer in the neighborhood?  To the power pole next to your house?  To your house?  Inside your house?

Laundry

"Never mind.  I'll do it myself".

Going from meeting to meeting, I find myself with little time
to do the things that I need to do.  Laundry is one of those things.
Give me half a chance, and I enjoy doing the wash, but when
you ask me to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and I get
up too late to do it in the morning... it seems as though I
never quite catch up.  Now I am fighting with the hotel, and am
going to fight mean.

To start off, there are only 8 shirts I can wear.  Corps folk are
let - OK, leased - the shirt for the mission.   But no matter who
you are, if you wear your shirt for two days, you are still
down to your last shirt at the end of the second week.

Never get down to the last shirt.  Lesson learned.

Going to the front desk to ask about bulk laundry seemed
to be the best solution.  "Sir, how much does it cost to
run a load of laundry?"

"Around $20.  It is $4 per pound."  I have at least forty pounds.

"And does it come back gold plated?!  Tony (I point) went to
Desert Storm and it didn't cost him that for the year!
You have got to be kidding!"  He answered in a thick accent:

"Never would I lie to you, sir.  What I have quoted is the
going rate for laundry in the area.  If you are looking
to have your shirts dry cleaned, it will be more."

Make a fist.  Make it relax.  Using every technique that will help
you avoid an ugly scene. I am seriously on the verge of a bad
cry.  This essentially costs me a meal's price - one that I will
never get to enjoy.  I ask, "Are there manual washers?"  I am
going to figure out a way to get this done without going in
to debt to do it.  I have been setting aside the quarters, and have,
say, thirty, but I'd rather not ask him for help.  I would gladly say
goodbye to this hotel first.  But I can't show up to work with stains.
Never have.  Never will.  He points in the general direction, and I am
going.... trudging.... towards the stairs.

To spend the next hours washing, when I could be sleeping, well, to
tell you the truth, it is a bit of a relief.  I have been eating
a lot, and not exercising much.  And it would be a
lie to say I haven't stretched the shirts a little with the amount
and richness of the food I am eating.  So it would not
hurt me at all to take an evening away from the table.  And to write...

you.

(yeah.  you got rick rolled.)

The Beauty of Recovery

When I arrived in Puerto Rico, just a few days before Thanksgiving, almost two full months has passed since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico.  And I don't know what I expected to find.  But even then, there were indications that recovery was going to be fast and slow.

Amazing food, everywhere - the kitchens were open.  Lots of hustle and bustle.  Grocery stores, stocked with food.  A few shelves were a little threadbare, but there was nothing that I needed that I couldn't get.  Well, except for a hotel room....

I came in to my office on day, and on the way I saw some beautiful flowers, and almost immediately fell in love with the tropical paradise.  It was as if I was hearing half of the song from West Side Story:

Always the pineapples growing, 
Always the coffee blossoms blowing . . . 

Yes.  It is still a disaster zone.  There were piles of debris.  There were downed trees and power lines.  There were buildings with broken windows.

And then, there were some trees that had just started to put on leaves, despite the hit.

Plumeria with a few remaining leaves.

All the leaves that remained were tattered, and most were ripped off.  But there was, at least, a little evidence of what could come back.

What is your estimate?

Quick:

Your power is down to your island.  You haven't even had time to assess, and there are people who need answers today.  How many lines need to be repaired?  How many lines need to be replaced? How many towers do you need?  How many transformers?  How many insulators?

Just days before I arrived here in Puerto Rico, there were a hundred people in a massive meeting, and they came armed with forms and numbers and assistants who carried more of pieces of paper with more numbers. The cost estimator stood up, pointed to the spreadsheet projected on the screen, and explained (through a translator, for those who spoke less English):

What we have here is every region in Puerto Rico, with the number of miles of power lines associated with each area.  What we need you to do is help us figure out how much damage there was for each of the lines in your district.  We need two estimates:  how many poles per mile you think are damaged, and how many poles per mile you think are destroyed.

"Arecibo, there exists in your district 72 miles of the 230kv transmission lines.  How much do you estimate is damaged?  How much destroyed?"

The three people from Arecibo start working through their reports, looking for answers to provide  to the group, hoping to get the number right.  Guessing too low would mean that there would be areas left undone.  But it needs to be a serious estimate, and any fluff would take away from areas of the country that have need.

 The transformer lines - the big metal towers - are the easiest, because helicopters flew the lines and counted downed towers.  All those need to be replaced, and we can estimate damage to  the others. The answer is 50 miles.

"Good.  Now let's do the next one.  How about the 115kv lines?"

One by one, line by line, region by region, the estimates are provided, and once everyone agrees, Derek puts them up on the spreadsheet.

And that is the estimate that we have been using for our work on ever since.

We immediately ordered half of what the spreadsheet said we needed.  The spreadsheet reflected a wish list, and most of the system needs to be replaced - Puerto Rico has struggled to invest in and provide upgrades to the infrastructure.  That wish list is huge.

Turn! Turn! (Too late).

All I wanted to do was get to the other side of the interstate.

This week, we got moved to a different office across town, and in this new space, I don't know my way around.  There is an center with a few shops right across the highway, and I decided on the first day that I wanted to stop by there on my way home.  The road that I use to get back onto the highway is not well marked.  The brilliant traffic engineers responsible for this masterpiece created a series of access tunnels under the highway that would make a hobbit proud.  It is a warren of unmarked burrows, and each one takes you to a different magical place.

My first entry took me on an epic, and completely unexpected, journey along the highway to the west.  I honestly have no idea how.

A half hour, three illegal left hand turns later, and a few near misses with massive buses and trucks, and I am back where I started.  Second try at the intersection:  OK, the left road took me the wrong way, so I will try the middle road, which will surely take me across.

Christmas Lights

When I got here two weeks ago, there were no functioning traffic lights, and the rules we normally follow for lights that are out of service do not apply here in the land of San Juan.

For that matter, I am not sure that I understand the traffic rules that do apply here under normal circumstances.  But we are definitely not in the land of "All lanes stop, and traffic proceeds in turns from the right".

In the post-Maria environment, driving in San Juan is a winner-take-all, devil-take-the-hindmost clustermess of the first order.  And rights of tonnage do apply: the biggest, baddest vehicles win every head-to-head confrontation. Literally.

There is also a scarification system in place, where battered vehicles have an advantage over pristine ones.  (Drafting on the bumper of a semi as it barrels through the intersections, riding the wave of scattered vehicles and honking sedans.... well, I find it to be an effective technique, when I can manage it.)  The driving, as I mentioned before, appeals to my chaotic nature, and brings out a different personality in me.  I love it.