The $500,000 Mistake
March 5, 2020 Uncategorized 7 comments jfuller20
This summer when I was working for an electrical contractor I was tasked with helping a crew put in a standby generator for an Hannaford. The Generator was a large industrial size generator that could power most of the store if the power went out. We had been working on this job for about a month already because we had to dig a couple of trenches so that we could lay down some new conduit because the existing generator was inside the boiler room and this new one was going outside. We had to dig trenches and help pour a new concrete pad before we could set the gerator up. Pouring the concrete pad we almost had a disaster because we almost forgot to cover the tops of the conduit that we put in and if we had not done this some concrete might have gotten poured into the conduits. After that we were able to bring the generator up to the hannaford and set it into place. This took a while because of the size of it. The next day we were finally able to start preparing to wire the generator.
This was where the $500,000 mistake almost took place. I was told to help pull the wire from the generator to the service disconnects we were able to do this with no problem. After we ran the wire ran to the disconnects we ran them up to the automatic Transfer switches. The generator was so big that we had to have two service disconnects on the outside of the building and the transfer switches had to be in their own room. Once we got the wires all pulled to the transfer switch we were finally able to start wiring it up. We started at the generator where we had to hook up the 1/0 wires to the lugs. This is where the second mistake almost happened for some reason the lugs were not sized correctly at the cummin’s factor so we had to wait two weeks for those to come in. If we did not wait and put them on the wrong size lugs it would have made a bad connection causing arcing. Since we could not hook up the wires at the generator we moved on to the disconnect switches where we were able to do just fine. The third and most costly mistake almost happened at the transfer switches I was told to wire one one them so I started and not thinking I just connected all of the wires to lugs. I was not aware of what colors I hooked up to which lugs mattered that much. I was surprised that it mattered that much, but was even more surprised about how bad my mistake could have ended. When doing high voltage three phase power the three colors are brown, orange and yellow. Brown is considered phase one, orange is considered phase 2 and yellow is considered phase 3 and if I hooked them up wrong but somebody else hooked the up that way it would cause the engine to spin backwards causing it to seize up and break. Lucky the master electrician I was with noticed that and had me correcting it which saved the company $500,000 if it would have ran like this and broke.
This has helped me realize that all big mistakes are really made up of a bunch of little mistakes that compound into a much larger mistake. I think that my story helps show this because we see the three smaller mistakes could have led to the $500,000 mistake which would have been the generator and one of the transfer switches breaking. We see the same idea of a bunch of little events leading to a big event in “The Great Gatsby”. We see the same idea of small mistakes leading to one big mistake or event. What we see in the book is he does things that eventually result in him getting murdered because he killed the girl with his car. There are a couple of small events that lead up to this point that helped identify him as the driver that lead to his murder. We see a similar thing in my story where a couple of little mistakes end up compiling into one large mistake that could have ended very badly. What we get out of my story is that if we have a question about something that we do not know a lot about sometimes it is better to ask questions first then just diving right into a project that you know little about. We see in both of the stories that a couple of small events can all compile into a much bigger and sometimes a lot more dangerous large event.
Photo by sjeemz on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA
7 Comments
I remember you telling this story to me, on the bus. Yeah that would be a huge disaster if the wires would have been incorrectly hooked up causing the engine to spin backwards. I couldn’t imagine how mad the company is that would have to pay up the 500k. Anyway great story
I am glad that the mistake got fixed quickly. I was wondering what arcing is? Next time maybe explain what some of the things are. I like when you said “This has helped me realize that all big mistakes are really made up of a bunch of little mistakes that compound into a much larger mistake” because it makes sense. Also sometimes small things that we would not think about normally can have catastrophic consequences.
Wow, that is some serious luck! I have a story kinda related to yours but not as expensive. It was my first oil change that I did by myself. My car takes up to five quarts of oil so I figured I wouldn’t need to add any more. So once I was done I waited a few days and then checked up on it. I checked my oil and it was all the way down so I immediately put some more oil in. So if I didn’t check my oil my transmission could have blown which would mean I would have to get a new car. So it’s not half a million dollars but still a big mistake.
With such a dangerous job it’s good to expect the most basic things, but to run into the unexpected, the things that are not basic complications is scary and leaves a person unprepared. With this almost huge mistake in a cost of $500k it reinforces the belief in making sure one prepares themselves for anything, even the unexpected.
This blog post was very smooth and easy to read and relate to me. I couldn’t imagine the trouble you guys/girls may have got in if that “$500,000” mistake would have happened. Good thing you caught yourself. Very lucky for that guy noticing and saving the company such money. This is easy to relate to because of the mistakes I have seen or almost seen done and how much money they would have costed. One tiny mistake could cost so much!
This was a great story and huge lesson that was learned. It was very interested and made me want to keep reading it and I think that that is so important in a Blog post. I think the biggest take away that I had through was the lesson that little mistake can lead to much bigger things. I think that that is a lesson a lot of people should know and learn.
abyras20 an electrical arc is when the electricity jumps from one surface to another surface. There are good arcs and bad arcs the good ones are things like in switches where the electricity jump from terminal to terminal. There are also bad arcs like I talked about in my post.