Wired for the Work
OPALCO Lineworker completes four-year apprenticeship
Brant Akers moved to Orcas Island from Salem, Oregon in 2015 with his wife. Like many islanders, they fell in love with the island while camping in Moran State Park and decided to make the leap.
Brant worked with local excavation companies before applying for the Lineworker Apprentice job at OPALCO. The job seemed to be a good fit for his skills since it includes both physical and mental aspects of the job. Brant also had his Commercial Driver’s License which is a requirement for Journeyman Lineworkers.
Journeyman Lineworker Apprenticeships are a 4-year program that require apprentices to work 40 hours a week, attend Saturday school, and finish all the required testing and steps. The steps of the program are fulfilled with required hours on the job and enable the apprentice to do increasingly more technical work – such as working on energized lines. Apprentices start out making about 60% of what a full Journeyman Lineworker makes, and that increases as they complete the various program steps.
Throughout the apprenticeship, apprentices are also required to attend 2-week and 1-week “camps” to learn specific skills such as climbing poles, rigging, transformer, hotstick time, electrical theory, and more. These camps are at Camp Rilea Training Center in Oregon.
Apprentices also have the opportunity to work on high voltage lines with Bonneville Power Administration. Brant did a 2-week stint helping build a steel tower that is over 100-feet tall and another week working on a high line spanning a river on the Muckleshoot Reservation. Brant says that exposure to the “high time” makes it easier to work at those extreme heights.
During his time with OPALCO, Brant was expected to take as many of the off-hour outage calls as he could, often working for many hours throughout the night in cold and wet conditions to troubleshoot and repair outages. Throughout his apprenticeship, some of his favorite projects included working on the new substation rebuild and upsizing wire throughout the grid.
Apprenticeships require a lot of dedication to complete. Apprentices are working full time, attending school out of work hours, studying the various concepts, and are on call for power outages.
When asked what advice he would give to people interested in linework, Brant says that “these apprenticeships own your life for 4 years; you need to have a certain level of toughness to endure long hours in extreme condition but it’s a great trade to get involved in – just don’t take it lightly”.
Brant is excited to complete his apprenticeship so he can enjoy his hobbies like dirt bike riding, fishing, working on his property, and fixing up old Toyota trucks.
OPALCO is now taking applications for a lineworker apprentice on Orcas Island. Find the details at www.opalco.com/careers.
