Global Power Group, Inc.

Adam S. Eidson, PMP, is the Electrical Operations Director at Global Power Group with more than 12 years of experience. A Project Management Professional and Certified Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt, Eidson focuses on developing people and improving the coordination between field execution and business operations. He is continuing his education in business management and leadership.

Building Customer Confidence through Verified Performance

I have dealt with generators that operated at partial load and failed when tested at full load. The equipment could start and run, but a performance problem still had to be resolved. Experiences like that have shaped my view of electrical operations. The confidence we give a customer has to be supported by what the system has actually demonstrated.

I came up through the field as an electrician and foreman before moving into project management and operations. I still estimate and manage projects, which keeps me close to the consequences of decisions about labor, purchasing and scope. A job may look straightforward on a schedule, while the crew is facing an undocumented modification or an incomplete material delivery. Leadership becomes visible in how those realities are handled.

Resolving Installation Constraints before Shutdown

An outage makes that connection especially clear. The customer is planning around a period without normal power, and the crew has a limited window to complete the work. When installation runs late, it can consume the time needed for verification and restoration. Working backward from the required return-to-service time exposes that risk while there is still room to adjust the sequence, coordinate support or reconsider the outage.

The details that threaten that plan are often ordinary. A transfer switch may have arrived, for example, while a required lug kit is still missing. To the office, the delivery may look complete; to the electrician, the installation cannot proceed. Discovering that difference before shutdown gives the team time to resolve it. This is why field verification and ownership of unresolved issues matter as much as the date on the schedule.

Making Operational Decisions with Better Field Information

The same preparation helps safety hold up under pressure. A crew that finds conditions different from the approved plan needs to know that stopping and escalating the issue will be supported. Restoration or temporary-power contingencies should already be understood. People make better decisions when they know the boundaries of the work and have somewhere to express their concerns. That includes fatigue. The employees who repeatedly accept emergency calls and overtime still need recovery time, and leadership has to be willing to adjust their workload.

A job may look straightforward on a schedule, while the crew is facing an undocumented modification or an incomplete material delivery. Leadership becomes visible in how those realities are handled.

Testing brings the focus back to what the customer needs the system to do. A generator load-bank test evaluates performance under the applied test load, but it does not by itself verify the automatic transfer sequence or the response of connected equipment. Those functions need their own verification within the agreed test plan. When acceptance criteria are established beforehand, technicians know what their measurements must demonstrate, and the owner has a basis for accepting the work. Clear records also keep deficiencies visible until corrective work and any required retesting are completed.

That need for useful information extends into daily field reporting. ‘Waiting on material’ gives the office little to work with. Explaining that a missing lug kit is preventing feeder termination and threatens Friday’s outage gives purchasing and project management a specific issue to resolve. Accurate records of changed conditions also support scope and billing discussions. When the office responds and explains the resolution, the crew sees how its observations influence decisions. Reporting becomes part of getting the work done.

Across a department, those reports can reveal recurring problems. If the same approval process is delaying several crews, resolving it can improve performance on multiple jobs. An operations leader needs that view of the workload to understand where a business process is making field execution more difficult.

Planning Microgrids around Critical Facility Loads

I expect that coordination to become even more important as microgrids take a larger role in powering data centers, research campuses and other facilities with large, critical electrical loads. A microgrid coordinates on-site energy resources and facility loads so they can operate with the utility grid or independently when designed for island operation. Depending on the site, those resources may include generators, solar and battery storage. The appeal is greater resilience and more flexibility in supplying power, including where limited utility capacity complicates expansion.

For a data center, cooling can be as consequential as the servers; a research facility may need to sustain freezers, ventilation and sensitive equipment. The owner and design team have to define which loads must remain supported, for how long and through which operating conditions. Those decisions shape installation, commissioning and maintenance. The value of a microgrid ultimately depends on whether it can sustain the intended operation when the facility needs it.

Developing those capabilities starts long before someone receives a leadership title. An apprentice reviewing a one-line diagram with an experienced electrician begins connecting a task to the loads it supports. A foreman learning how a field changes affects cost and scheduling gains a broader understanding of the business. As responsibility grows, experience with estimating, contracts and job costs helps turn technical ability into sound operational judgment.

For me, electrical leadership means keeping those connections intact. The crew’s observations have to reach the people making commitments, and those commitments have to reflect what the field can safely deliver. That gives our people the support to do sound work and our customers a reason to trust the result.