When a major storm is heading toward landfall and most people are evacuating, Irby crews move in instead. Following storm outages, our top priority is to bring residents a sense of normalcy by safely restoring power as quickly as possible. Hurricane Idalia was no different, and in the wake of the storm, Irby deployed over 520 crew members across Florida to perform storm restoration work. These crews included line workers, supervisors, mechanics, safety coordinators, and storm damage assessors who performed transmission, distribution, logistics, and storm damage assessment work. In addition to this, Irby also provided various types of equipment and assisted with mobilizing the Quanta Mobile Command Center to a staged area in Perry, Florida. Project managers and supervisors from several organizations utilized the command center to conduct storm restoration operations.

Less than a week after Hurricane Idalia made landfall, Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, announced that 96% of power had been restored. He went on to praise the thousands of brave linemen by saying “…restoring power to the homes and businesses of impacted Floridians is an important step in the recovery process and would not be possible without the hard work of our utility linemen.” Irby is proud to have assisted our customers, the residents of Florida, and our fellow line workers in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia.

Read more about Florida’s speedy restoration efforts at the link HERE.

Irby’s top of the line equipment empowers our people and projects to be the best they can be. Casey Lawrence, Irby Truck Driver, and his family recently attended the annual Gulf Coast Big Rig Truck Show. This event promotes the trucking industry through competition and community with the core goal of supporting the Wounded Warrior Project.

The show took place on Friday, July 21st and Saturday, July 22nd in Biloxi at the Mississippi Coast Convention Center. Casey entered his Irby truck into the “Combo” truck class competition, which includes truck and trailer combination rigs.

Casey’s truck ended up being the very last truck to be judged in the Combo category. There were more than 90 trucks entered in the contest, and Casey’s Irby truck won two awards! Irby won First Place for Combo Best Interior, and Third Place Combo Overall. Casey said it was an honor to win. More importantly, though, Casey enjoyed the camaraderie, industry networking, and showing that he holds his truck to the highest standards.

Way to go, Casey!

Nicole Sparks, Irby Office Manager, noticed something strange upon her arrival at the Claremore, Oklahoma office early one morning.

As she was backing into her parking spot, she saw what appeared to be a small fire under a van parked across the street. No one accompanied the vehicle or was in the area at the time. She secured her belongings and went toward the van to verify what exactly she  was seeing. Once she realized that there was some sort of electrical fire happening under the engine and near the front passenger side tire, she quickly retrieved a fire extinguisher and was able to put out the fire without further damage to the vehicle.

The Quanta Commitment Coin is only given to those employees who go above and beyond while on the job. Quanta and Irby are honored to present this award to Nicole, and we thank her for her swift action in what could have been a very hazardous situation.

Luke Naron, Irby Regional Safety Manager, presenting Nicole Sparks with the Quanta Commitment Coin.

Irby knew from the get-go that Job 2839 was going to require special planning and effective teamwork. The work order required work to be performed that didn’t meet the adjacent transmission line clearance. The substation optimization project in Port Richey, Florida was complex, to say the least. A scheduled outage would be required, therefore making an on-time delivery even more critical.

Team Irby is no stranger to the complexities, organization, and management of this line of work. So, we set out with a plan, called all hands on deck, and executed accordingly. Assistant Superintendent, Ricky Hobby, and two overhead General Foremen, Michael Adams and Jeremy Sanderson, developed a plan that involved 12 overhead crews. Fifty-eight poles needed to be set in less than 48 hours.

Due to congestion in the area, all 58 holes had to be dug by hand. To expedite the timeline, six crews worked during the day laying out the poles and digging holes, and six other crews worked through the night setting the poles during a 10 p.m. transmission scheduled outage. An Irby transmission crew was onsite with the distribution team both nights actively testing and grounding the transmission line.

The team faced two big challenges in addition to the already tight timeline and handwork required. First, the rainy weather was not in our favor. Second, locates were missed or wrongly marked in many cases. This held up our production and halted our original plans for a short period. Thankfully, Ricky Hobby was able to work quickly to track down the various locate companies to get all necessary locations marked correctly.

While work was held up, crews shifted in real-time to assist others. The team kept busy, loading and hauling poles and were able to mobilize to complete their original work plan as soon as the locates were complete.

Our resilient crews went above and beyond to ensure everything was ready for the next shift coming in. They worked long hours and remained on site the entire course of production. The project was successful, and we were able to get all 58 poles set for a total distance of 1.62 miles. Power was restored as planned, and the project was completed on time within the 48-hour window.