Results That Matter
by Tom Walch, Chief Executive Officer
GRAND JUNCTION, COLO. - (March 4, 2024) Grand Valley Power team members are focused on delivering results for our cooperative members. You experience it with great hometown service. You benefit from reliability numbers that are typically among the best in the state of Colorado and across the nation. But there’s one critical area where our team members are delivering great results that might not be so visible to you. A few weeks ago, Grand Valley Power marked the five-year anniversary of its last lost-time accident. In other words, it has been more than five years since the last time any of our team members missed a day of work due to an on-the-job incident.
Safety is our most important foundational principle. With the hazardous nature of the work that so many of our employees engage in on a daily basis, it has to be. Everything we do begins with safety at the top of mind. Electrical linework is one of the most dangerous occupations around. It requires a high level of technical knowledge to understand the physics of flowing electrons. It takes even more skill to route those electrons over and through the equipment necessary to bring it into your homes and businesses safely and efficiently. And GVP linemen do it so well that we all take for granted that any time we hit the switch, the lights will come on.
Technical expertise is just one part of the equation. Our linemen have to climb poles carrying heavy equipment. They must learn to use bulky personal protective gear that limits their manual dexterity and makes a difficult job even tougher. They have to operate heavy, complex tools. In many instances, our linemen have to work high above the ground, in close proximity to energized high-voltage electric lines. When they’re called to respond to a power outage, they don’t have the luxury of saying that it’s too cold or too wet or too dark. They don’t say that they can’t make it because the roads are too icy. They don’t do any of that. They just answer the call.
As a career desk jockey who spends most of my time in meetings or in front of a computer screen, I really can’t fully appreciate the hard work that our team members routinely perform. I can’t comprehend what it’s like to subject myself to the high degree of risk that our linemen accept every day. All I can do is express my gratitude to them for their willingness to do what they do for the members of Grand Valley Power. I can be proud of the way they answer the call.
You have all heard me brag about how the hometown service delivered by our Grand Valley Power team members is rightly branded as “Five-Star Customer Service.” Having marked five years without a lost-time accident, and having seen all the things our linemen — and everyone who supports them — do to get the job done safely, we can stake a claim as having a “Five- Star Safety Program” as well.
Because at the end of the day, when all our linemen return home to their families to toss a ball with their kids or have dinner with their spouse, it’s then that we realize what Five-Star Safety truly gets us. As much as anything else we do here at our cooperative, these are the results that matter.