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September/October 2020
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THE DAVEY BULLETIN
It's not uncommon for the Commercial
Landscape Services (CLS) crew at
Naval Air Station Jacksonville (NAS
Jax) to become friendly with families
on the base. In July, as one family
was packing their moving van, the
two young children ran to meet Vanez
Hardy, landscape crew leader,
to give him a handmade card and
drawing thanking them for keeping
their lawn looking nice.
"Over the past two years, our guys
would interact with the kids often,
waving and having fun from a safe
distance. The kids loved it," said Tom
Freeman, operations manager, CLS
Southern region. "We mow on a
regular schedule, so, like clockwork, the
kids would know when we'd be there
and come to the windows to wave."
Vanez Hardy, landscape crew leader, and landscape technicians Jerry Tackel and
Marvin Teston, have worked together for six years at NAS Jax. Providing an excellent
client experience and being friendly to children is part of every day at Davey.
Roughly 65 crews worked around the clock to restore
power to over 227,000 DTE Energy customers after a storm
whipped through Southeast Michigan in July.
This storm, coupled with wind and sagging wires from the
high heat, caused these outages to occur, said Clay Carlson,
area manager. With the long hours during this response, it
was stressed to the crews the importance of getting rest,
staying hydrated and properly identifying hazards in the
pre-job briefings.
"Anytime you're doing storm work it could be unfamiliar
to someone," Carlson said. "There are different pressures
on wires and being able to identify those pressures and
knowing what cuts to make is important."
The crews worked for six days with active outages and were
on call for follow up for another week. Carlson attributes
their ability to restore power quickly to the maintenance
pruning they've been conducting on the DTE system.
"If this happened two years ago, this outage could have
lasted a couple weeks as opposed to days," Carlson said.
Clay Carlson's advice for storm work is to treat every job as a unique
job and have a plan for all hazards and obstacles. He said an obstacle
for this storm was COVID-19 because they had to figure out how to
communicate with homeowners and how to do that safely while still
abiding by social distancing guidelines.
CREWS RESTORE POWER TO
OVER 200,000 DTE CUSTOMERS
A THANKFUL FAMILY IN JACKSONVILLE
