- Planning and initiating projects
- Establishing OSHA and customer safety requirements
- Setting towers and poles and constructing other devices to support transmission/distribution cables
- Establishing work positions for maintaining and repairing overhead distribution or transmission lines
- Stringing new wire or maintaining old wire
- Installing and maintaining insulators
- Installing and maintaining transformers and other equipment
In performing these duties Linemen use climbing tools, hand tools, and heavy equipment on a daily basis.
Like Inside Wiremen, Linemen also need to develop a great deal of technical knowledge during their apprenticeship. A recent job analysis identified 77 knowledge areas that are important for successful performance.
A few of the more important ones are knowledge of:
- How to work with energized circuits
- How to perform an emergency rescue
- First Aid
- Connections to be made for various transformers
- What makes a wooden pole unsafe to climb
- Delta and Wye transformer connections
- Specific job safety rules
- Appropriate hand signals to use with ground crew or equipm operators
- The proper knot to tie in different circumstances
- Blueprints, including symbols used
Some of the most important skills for Linemen are:
- Skill at working on high voltage lines while wearing protecti quipment such as rubber gloves
- Skill at performing CPR
- Skill at rigging equipment
- Skill at tying knots
- Skill at operating a bucket truck
- Skill at splicing high voltage cable
- Skill at splicing aluminium or copper cable
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While Inside Wiremen install conduit, electrical wiring, fixtures and electrical apparatus, Outside Linemen are often observed climbing poles or in bucket trucks, installing or repairing electrical power lines out-of-doors. Major duties of the Outside Lineman include: