San Antonio, Texas, United States
Currently in the role of a Senior Lead Design Technician with over 13 years of experience in underground and overhead utilities, specializing in GIS applications, utility locating, and field inspection. My career has been about ensuring precision and safety in complex projects, from mapping utility routes to coordinating permits and leading teams to deliver results. Currently, as a Senior Lead Design Technician at ENTRUST Solutions Group, I manage projects whether it be coordinating with our clients to clarify routes, assisting them in confirming all telecom permits needed for each specific project assigned to our company, training as well as designating certain parts of our processes to my team and helping mentor to meet various production goals as well as quality control and coming up with processes that meet and exceed our client's ever growing and changing needs and expectations. My earlier roles included Field Inspector and Utility Locator, these really honed my ability to collect accurate data under tight deadlines, ensuring compliance and safety across diverse utility networks. I'm passionate about leveraging technology to improve infrastructure and enjoy collaborating with clients and colleagues to bring projects to life. Let’s connect to discuss how we can drive efficiency and innovation in the utilities space!
Coordinating projects with various clients on routes and permits needed for Pole, State, City, County and Railroad Permits. Adding missing permits communicating with clients on needed adjustments for permits. Reaching out to clients for route clarity and confirming requests. Creating maps and data for fielders to collect needed data for permitting with use of certain client GIS Data, Google Earth, ARC GIS, QGIS, and Katapult. Managing a team assisting in confirming any areas of my expertise. Meetings with team and other Management for updates production targets and project planning.
Coordinating with Engineers and AEP field personnel on pole data collection inspecting utility poles in the field, recording detailed data about pole conditions, attachments, location with use of AEP Field view and GPS devices creating reports for design engineers. Confirming compliance in field according to AEPs pole standards and safety protocols. Accessing AEP easements and coordinating with home owners for private property access. Travel about 70% and out of town hotel stay for completing various AEP pole regions and meeting deadlines. Completing expense reports and mileage for all trips.
Identifying Pole locations and visually inspecting and taking note of evident damage codes. Testing the inside of the poles with equipment such as the Resistograph. Providing our customers and clients with graphs showing more detailed specifics of the the life of their utility poles. Depending on the year of the pole, the integrity and customer requirements preserving those poles by excavating, internally and externally treating those poles for a longer life span. This ultimately provided our customers with a different more cost effective approach for their pole inspections.
As a SUE Tech II my responsibilities included overseeing other SUE Technicians in designating and locating all utilities in selected areas for future dig sites with help of prints provided by various utility companies. Also upon customers request exposing and providing them with further information including photos, schematics and a detailed print with all utilities sizes and depths and any other information upon request. All by use of various designating and ground penetrating equipment, RD units, GIS scanners, Ground Penetrating Radar units, Hydrovac Excavation Truck, Core Drills, Pneumatic Tamper, Jack Hammers and other heavy equipment when needed.
My responsibilities included reporting to the AEP Harlingen Office. These tasks included calling in and locating for our various customers including gas lines, electric lines, cable, fiber optic, water, and sewer, etc. with the use of prints, maps and locating equipment. Worked closely with the electrical engineering department of AEP providing them with survey sketches of the areas they had planned to excavate. One of the major programs I used when working with prints was Fieldview. This program enabled us to find pole locations and pole information. I completed all requests in a timely fashion meeting deadlines depending on the priority of the job along with various emergency responses during the day and/or after hours. I worked with other utility companies that we did not have contracts with making sure all their utilities were also marked and on the sketches before any excavating was done by AEP. Complied with different sets of rules and requests for marking and protecting each of our different customers including American Electric Power, Magic Valley Electric, Time Warner Cable, Windstream Fiber Optic, ATT/D, Verizon Communications, Texas Gas Services, etc