A Critical Spark: How electrical engineers bring their clients' vision to life.

• Author: Kreilkamp, Danny
• Position: ENGINEERING

Why do transformers hum?... because they don't know the words to the song.

This was Jacob Pomeranz', a senior engineer with Electric Power Systems (EPS), best effort at an electrical engineering joke.

While they might not provide much in the way of comedic relief, it's probably because engineers like Pomeranz are busy taking care of just about everything else.

From power generation to microchip design, to telecommunications and industrial lighting, electrical engineers keep the energy flowing for Alaska and its electro-dependent residents.

"There's quite a range of work." says Pomeranz. "You can take so many paths as an electrical engineer. ! focus on power generation, but even in the power industry there are people that design transmission lines, distribution lines, or substations.

And then you go over to the telecommunications side--and that same electrical engineer can focus on communications such as fiber network design, communication based protective relaying, or cyber security design.

"We have to be a jack of all trades," echoes RSA Engineering's Associate Principal Jeremy Maxie, who serves as the Illuminating Engineering Society's district chair for Western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. "We kind of do everything and then lean on each other where you need that specialized help."

Although the processes underlying these projects share more similarities than differences, there are some distinctions between bringing a new power plant onboard or outfitting an industrial warehouse with its lighting needs.

Power Generation

"A lot more happens than you might think," Pomeranz says on how EPS brings its clients' power generation projects to life. "People call with an idea that they need a power plant built, but often they don't really have an understanding of what it's going to take to go from that idea to an end product."

What it really comes down to, Pomeranz says, is asking the right questions.

"Once you get to the client's idea or end goal, then you start from the beginning and ask them the basic questions of power consumption: what type of equipment are they going to be operating, what type of fuels do they have access to, can they run natural gas, do they have access to hydro-realty understanding the basis of where they're located and what they need."

He continues: "After that initial conversation, we start with a high-level design to make sure they have the same understanding that we do, and then we go through high-level drawings with them--what we call a basis of design."

That basis of design is a collaborative medium of written communication that ensures the client and the firm are clear on expectations and they can comfortably communicate what's trying to be achieved, as well as the assumptions that the project is built on.

But Pomeranz says power generation projects go beyond design and construction aspects. "You have to be able...