Dean Oswald

May 1990

Job Title:
Employer: American Transmission Company

Job Description:
I am the main contact for maintenance work on ATC substations in the southeastern part of the state, primarily in the Milwaukee and Fox Valley areas. This includes providing technical support to field crews during emergency restoration following equipment damage and routine maintenance work. I also am responsible for setting the yearly budget for maintenance work and assuring the work gets done within the approved budget.

I also provide input to our project group concerning when equipment has reached the end of its useful life and should be replaced. As part of this, I offer input as to equipment and control standards for new installations. I occasionally will do some field engineering to expedite restoring equipment or placing new equipment in service.


UWP Experience:
My educational experience at UWP was helpful in enabling me to apply the theory I had learned at school to practical work experience. Although I have yet to use a differential equation or an integral on my job, understanding the math and theory behind Maxwell's equations has been useful in dealing with real world problems I have faced. The hands on lab work also was helpful in reading and troubleshooting schematics when working on control circuits that aren't quite functioning the way they should.


TYPICAL WORK DAY:
The first part of my day starts with responding to any equipment problems that occurred overnight or over a weekend. Depending on the time of year it is, the next thing would be to check on what routine maintenance activities will be occurring for that day. Project meetings for future construction activities also take up a lot of my time with a lot of interaction with the project team and the outage coordinators. Establishing the future year budget is normally done in June or July of the proceeding year, with time spent throughout the year tracking costs and work performed to make sure we are staying on track.


Sample Project Description:
I don't have any one project that I would call my favorite. Instead, I would say that when I get involved in a problem that has proven to be difficult to resolve or to determine the root cause of the failure, that is what I find the most satisfying once we have found the solution.