This special NETA section of the magazine is a compilation of interviews conducted at the 2023 PowerTest Conference where we interviewed board members and thought leaders with great insights into NETA as it embarks on several strategic initiative, including adding the “I” for International. When I attended my first NETA conference over a decade ago, I have been impressed by the way members, who are often competitors, come together in a more collaborative way to make our industry better, safer, or reliable and resilient. Let’s get started.

Alan Ross:
Ron, you have been a fixture at NETA and Shermco since, I came into the industry. I remember you speaking at my very first NETA PowerTest conference and here you are, still. Tell me about your journey?

Ron Widup: 
Yes Alan, it's been a day or so. I grew up in Central Texas, as an army brat. Out of high school, I went to Texas State Technical Institute, which is now TSTC, and got a two-year associate's degree in electrical power. I went to work for the summer as a co-op in the Dallas, Fort Worth area for a company called Roundhouse Electric & Engineering. They hired me out of school in 1982 and I was there for about a year. That's when another one of those cycles, where the oil market went down, so they told me, “Hey, we're retracting and we're going to shut down our Dallas operation so you could move to our Odessa, Texas office or…”. With all due respect to Odessa that move was not in my plans, so I called up the engineering manager from Shermco, who was our competitor, and said “Hey, I need a job. On June 6, 1983, I started as a field service technician for Shermco.

AR
You've been with Shermco the entire time? Shermco has changed a lot and grown a lot, tremendously. NETA is changing and growing, too. What's your role with NETA?

RW
At NETA there are so many people since we are a volunteer organization that does a ton of work, and I am just one of those people. I got involved with NETA in the early '90s. At Shermco we had a gentleman wh was on the board of directors and who was part of a group that did vacuum retrofits. We actually ended up spinning that business out and when he left the company, I filled in his board spot. I've been on the board since then. Through the years, I progressed through various committees and responsibilities. I did a couple of turns as President of the Association through the years, officer roles, and all that.

AR
That's when I met you. You were the President of Shermco. Back then, a decade or so ago

RW
Yes. I know the first time was in 2000 because I remember that because I was the President when our first ANSI standard came to be, and it was our test technician standard. That was a big day because it was our first standard. Al Peterson was a big part of making that happen and it was a proud day for the association because that was really a step change for us in the standards making aspect of the association. It started with that, which then eventually led to the four we have now.

AR
Somebody asked me years ago, “What is it about NETA that you think is so attractive for the industry?” I replied that it is the collaborative, collegiate way that competitors work together to advance the cause. I think that is one of the great values of NETA. And that still happens today, right?

RW
Yes. It's interesting and good in that, and I'll liken it to this; I am involved with the NFPA 70E standard, right? In fact, I represent NETA on that standard. And when you go to those committee meetings, you have the smartest people in the room when it comes to electrical safety, 40, 50, 60 people in the meetings. Everybody in the room, for the most part, is there for one reason, to make the world a better place for electrical safety. It's not personal gain; it's for the greater good. That's nice when you can have that collaborative of an environment where we're all doing it for the right reasons.

AR
Let’s turn our attention to the apprenticeship program. You've been working on it for a while.

RW
Yes, and through our training committee here at NETA we see that whether you're a plumber or a power system technician or a restaurateur, everybody has problems with labor and getting people. For us in the electrical power industry, the key is first you must have somebody, first off, who wants to work. Second, is that they're trainable, and third is that they could stay off the bad stuff that keeps you from getting on job sites, right? You get those three, and then you can start the process.
You have a few options. You can get somebody from the industry, and that's a finite number. You get people out of the industry, which happens. You can grow them internally and grow your own. It just depends on which way works best for you.
What we're finding is that there's only so many people that you can get from the outside. You must motivate, train, and grow from the inside. Training programs, the apprenticeship program, that's one of many ways to do it.
When you have a structure like an apprenticeship program that creates the next generation of workers, and that our training committee has been working on it's a new deal. It's helping us with a problem, especially if you don't have an internal workforce development group. Now we provide some tools to get those people on that path.

AR
Talk a little bit about your work on the NETA NFPA 70E committee.

RW
I'll start with the motivation for it. I started out as Field Service Tech. And in July of 1984, I was working at a hospital on a 480 volt, 400 amp automatic transfer switch. I was the transfer switch guy, right? And I was working on seven switches and upgrading the controls and all that and doing some modifications on the last switch of the day. I had to isolate the controls from the main switch, so I did. I pulled these three wires and isolated the controls, did the modifications and was putting it back. It was at a hospital. And what the hospital had done was they had added a microswitch on a piece of balsa wood on the switch. So, when it would transfer from normal to emergency, it would hit the switch and close the light of light bulb. Well, I put the factory accessory on and I thought, “well, I'll take this non-factory accessory off”. So, I took the little number 14 wire off and was pulling it out of the switch, which was the energized part, but instead, I had the de-energized part and the wire.
It caught and popped and hit one of the hot phases. It arced, it went phase to phase and the switch blew up in my face. Burns on my arms, my face and all that. You can't shut it off because it's a transfer switch. They're always critical.
The result was I was in the hospital for a week and a half, off work for a month. It gave me a real appreciation. This was in the early '80s, so we didn't know as much about what we I know now about electrical safety. I'm an ark flash survivor and I started thinking about it. I was looking around, and so NFPA 70 E was around. I got involved with it and was put on the committee in 1998. And that was right at the end of the cycle, which became the 2000 edition of 70 E. Okay. Well, that edition was the edition where it introduced the ark flash, the hazard risk tables.
And so a guy named Paul Hamer with Chevron, Texas, they'd taken their information. And so it was a new deal, and it was really the start of the awareness of the art flash hazard and all that. And so I've been on the committee since '98. And there's been an evolution through the years of understanding not only electric shock, but art flash, and what that can do to a person and all that. Just that process has been very beneficial for me because My motivation is I don't want to have what happened to me to happen to anybody else, so that's the motivation.

AR
Thanks so much Ron. My next guest is Dan Hook. He is the president of CBS Field Services.

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