HOLD THE PULL · Lineman Bull$hit

Kevin Robinson

10d • Bull$hit: Calling it Out

HOLD THE PULL

CHEAP BIDS… HOT WORK… DEADLY MATH

Lineman Bull$hit™ Academy

Let’s start this new series exactly where it belongs…

At the scene of the lie.

Not the lie told after the incident.

Not the lie buried in the report.

Not the lie polished up in a boardroom and passed around like corporate wisdom.

I mean the real lie…

The one thing this industry has been dragging behind it for years, while pretending not to hear the chain rattling.

Here it is…

A whole lot of energized work is not being done because it is necessary.

It is being done because the math got bad long before the crew ever showed up.

That’s it.

That’s the disease.

And if this industry had any real stomach left for truth… we’d admit right now that one of the biggest root causes behind unnecessary exposure is the unholy marriage between unit pricing and lowest-bid cowardice.

The Lie Starts on Paper

Before the truck ever rolls…

Before the briefing…

Before the rubber gets checked…

Before a man ever puts his hooks, sleeves, or gloves on…

The lie has already started.

It starts in the bid sheets.

Unit sheets.

Cost models.

Procurement packages.

All those neat little boxes where linework gets broken down into tidy categories for people who never have to actually do it.

Pole change-out…

Crossarm…

Insulator…

Transformer…

Cutout…

Dead-end…

Reconductor…

X units… Y dollars… next item.

Looks clean.

Looks efficient.

Looks manageable.

Looks like the kind of thing a power company can hand off to a contractor and say…

“Give me your best number.”

That’s where the bullshit walks in.

Because linework is not clean.

It is not predictable.

And it damn sure is not uniform.

One pole is roadside on firm ground with room to breathe.

The next one is jammed in a backyard, boxed in with fences, telecom, trees, mud, bad access, traffic, and pissed-off homeowners.

One piece of work is straightforward.

The next one is one bad decision away from lighting a man up.

But the paper treats them the same.

That’s the first betrayal.

Then Comes the Lowest Bid Circus

Now let’s talk about the real filth in this thing…

The race to the bottom.

Utilities put it out for bid.

Contractors sharpen their pencils until the lead snaps.

Everybody knows the number is bad.

Everybody knows the margin is thin.

Everybody knows the expectations didn’t get smaller…

The hazard didn’t get smaller…

The exposure didn’t get smaller…

The manpower needs didn’t get smaller…

But somehow the price did.

And here’s the part that ought to make your blood pressure jump…

The utility sees it.

They see the bids.

They see the spread.

They know damn well which numbers are rooted in field reality and which ones were born in fantasy.

And too many times…

instead of having the guts to stop the process and say:

“There is no honest way to do this work safely at that number…”

They award it anyway.

Because it’s cheaper.

Because it looks good on paper.

Because they can hide behind the contract later.

Because when the field starts absorbing the consequences… they’re nowhere near the blast radius.

That ain’t leadership.

That’s outsourced moral failure.

How Bad Math Becomes Hot Work

This is where the pull needs stopped.

Because some people still want to act like energized work just appears out of thin air…

like it’s some neutral field decision made in a vacuum.

Bullshit.

A whole lot of unnecessary hot work starts with commercial pressure.

The job was underbid.

The units don’t reflect reality.

The margin is trash.

The outage takes time.

Coordination takes time.

Planning takes time.

Safe execution takes time.

And time is money on a job where the money has already been squeezed by the throat.

So, what happens?

Everybody starts feeling the pressure.

Not in the boardroom…

not in procurement…

not in the utility billing office…

In the field.

The foreman feels it.

The crew feels it.

Supervision feels it.

And all of a sudden, the question quietly shifts from:

“What is the safest way to do this?”

to…

“What is the fastest way to keep this job alive?”

That’s when energized work starts getting treated like a productivity tool instead of a last-resort exposure.

That’s when people start saying:

“We can glove it…”

“We can just work around it…”

“We’ve done this hot before…”

“It’ll save the outage…”

“It’ll keep the job moving…”

And just like that…

What should have been an exception becomes a business model.

Don’t Hide Behind Training

Now here comes the predictable defense from people who always show up late to the truth…

“We have trained people.”

“We have procedures.”

“We have rubber goods.”

“We have standards.”

Good.

You'd damn well had better.

That still doesn’t mean the work should be hot.

Capability is not the same thing as justification.

Just because a journeyman can perform energized work does not mean that some accountant, planner, manager, or utility rep gets to quietly build a system that makes energized exposure more likely, just to protect the budget and schedule.

That’s not operational excellence.

That’s a dressed-up coward’s way of shifting risk downhill.

And let’s go one step farther…

The same people who love to brag about safety culture are often the same people building commercial environments that reward speed, punish delays, resist outages, and treat realistic labor as a problem, instead of a requirement.

That’s not a culture.

That’s a contradiction.

Who Owns This?

Everybody wants shared responsibility after something goes bad.

Funny how that works.

After the incident… everybody gathers around the grave with their sad face on…

talking about lessons learned, communication, accountability, and continuous improvement.

But before the job?

Before the award?

Before the pressure?

Before the bad assumptions?

Nobody wants to own a damn thing.

So let me help.

Utilities own this when they accept numbers that cannot support safe execution.

Contractors own this when they knowingly bid fantasy and then expect crews to make up the difference with pace, pressure, and exposure.

Leaders own this when they normalize hot work for convenience instead of necessity.

Supervision owns this when they let production tension creep into safety decisions and call it hustle.

And yes…

The field has to own its decisions too.

But do not get cute and act like all accountability is equal.

The people writing the contracts and awarding the work have far more influence over exposure than they ever want to admit.

This Is What Root Cause Looks Like

Everybody loves that phrase…

“Root Cause”.

They drag it out after every major event like they’re doing surgery.

But the root cause is not always some mysterious technical failure buried three layers deep.

Sometimes the root cause looks you dead in the face.

Sometimes the root cause is a unit system that treats wildly different work like it’s interchangeable.

Sometimes root cause is a bid structure that rewards fiction.

Sometimes root cause is a utility too spineless to reject a low number everybody knows is unsafe.

Sometimes root cause is a contractor willing to gamble that the crew will absorb what the estimate couldn’t.

Sometimes root cause is a system that says “safety first” out loud while quietly paying for “production first” behind closed doors.

That’s root cause.

And until we call it that… we’re just doing theater.

The Real Blood Price

Here’s what the spreadsheets never show…

Units don’t sweat.

Bid tabs don’t get tired.

Procurement models don’t kneel at funerals.

A budget does not go home to a family with burns, nerve damage, trauma, a busted body, or a folded flag.

People do.

That’s the blood price of cheap power.

That’s what gets paid when this trade lets commercial fantasy start shaping field exposure.

And that is exactly why this series exists.

Because some lies are too dangerous to keep dragging.

Hold The Pull

So here it is…

The first line in the sand.

If the only way a job stays profitable is by rushing, leaning on the crew, resisting outages, compressing control measures, or normalizing unnecessary energized work…

Then that job was never safely priced to begin with.

I don’t care how polished the contract is.

I don’t care how many policies sit in a binder.

I don’t care how many slogans get painted on the wall.

Bad math that drives exposure is not a field problem alone.

It is a leadership problem.

A contracting problem.

A utility problem.

A moral problem.

And until more people in this industry find the guts to say that out loud before the next incident instead of after it…

nothing really changes.

That’s what Hold The Pull is for.