I’m planning a 13-mile 230 kV reconductor with two 8-hour outage windows and restricted matting, and I’m trying to optimize the sequence so crews aren’t leapfrogging trucks all day. From your side, where does planning usually misjudge time — guard builds at road crossings, pulling through angle structures, or teardown — so I can set a realistic schedule and access plan?
Planning usually underestimates ‘pulling through angles’ — traveler swaps, block rigging, and tension checks chew big chunks of an 8‑hour window, so we pre‑rig travelers and stage angle kits the day before and leave road‑crossing guards up overnight to skip teardown; if mats are tight, park winch/tensioner at a central pad and run a pilot mule so trucks aren’t playing leapfrog. Can traffic control let you keep guards in place between windows, or do you have to drop them daily?
Big misjudge is the clearance/grounding cycle at the bookends — switching, tags, and ‘grounds out/grounds in’ can burn 45–90 minutes per window. To keep trucks from leapfrogging, we pre‑stage guards and travelers the day before and run a dedicated teardown pair one span behind the puller, @lisa_brooks91; think TSA for wire. Lock a 30‑min buffer before sag/set and a no‑new‑road‑guard cutoff two hours before end‑of‑window for sanity.
Agree with @lisa_brooks91 on the bookends, but the sleeper is reel swaps and splice time — on a 13‑mile 230 kV, each midspan sleeve can chew 45–60 min plus cool‑down, and restricted matting makes getting the press there slow. Pre‑stage full reels and two presses every 2–3 spans and lock splice locations before the window so you’re not dragging iron; “reel swaps eat windows.” Would it work to block the sequence so each 8‑hour ends at a deadend instead of midspan?
Big drift I see is QC/torque sign-offs and hardware fit-up at deadends; one seized socket or wrong yoke plate stalls the whole train. Put a “QC chaser” with a floater bucket one span ahead to pre-fit and stamp hardware so the pull never pauses — funny how often “the schedule dies in the little holds.” Do you have an access lead leapfrogging gates/mats a span ahead to keep the convoy from playing musical chairs?
The sleeper is traffic control around “guard builds at road crossings” — the set/clear churn burns more time than the pull. Lock a rolling closure and keep flaggers plus a small guard crew embedded with the tensioner train so you’re not resetting at every crossing, especially with restricted matting limiting turnarounds. Does DOT let you hold a continuous lane closure across both windows?
Press/cool on deadend compression is where I see the clock melt; piggybacking on @sophia_mar85, pre-stage a dedicated splice trailer and do a quick “test crimp” to set dies/pressure and paint-mark cutbacks before the first pull. Do you have a small crew just for sleeve prep and inhibitor so the stringing crew never pauses?