Number of Roadtechs in the business?

[RDTroja]

You guys are really old if you can remember rental cars.... maybe even getting reimbursed for gas and then throw in flying to the job and leaving your car at home. Maybe even free health insurance. My favorite was stock options and profit sharing.   But that was long ago.

All of that plus the site coordinator meets you at the airport and leads all of you (most everyone arrived on the same flight) straight to the bar, buys the first round or two and hands out perdiem checks. Or the company owner throws a big party at the local hotel under the guise of a 'welcome to the outage' meeting. Things like that are very rare these days.

[scotoma]

Yes, that was back when nuclear power was "too cheap to meter" and electric utilities were regulated. Outages were "scheduled" for 60-90 days and staying on schedule was not the norm. Most costs were rolled into the rate base and utilities were allowed to make a 10%+- profit. But perdiem was $50 or less ( $34/day when I started), payrate single digit and no bonuses. It wasn't a job, it was an adventure.

[SloGlo]

... perdiem was $50 or less ( $34/day when I started), payrate single digit and no bonuses. It wasn't a job, it was an adventure.

n gas was a buck a gallon, sew yer diem ratios well, pay rate ratios to the plus side, n theirs still know bonuses.
knot much has changed.

[SloGlo]

Rental cars and no FFD...

whale hale! their was know f.f.d. in the u.s.a. back in those days... mebbe airline pilots n train engineers.

[Marlin]

Rental cars

Rent-a-cars went where four wheel drives dare not tread 

[Old HP]

Wow Al Eidson came out of retirement to post on Nukeworker !!!!!  The man is a legend.  The other legend with rental cars is Captain Nemo . Maybe there WAS a reason we no longer get rental cars........
Back on topic now ... in regard to the number of Traveling Techs, sometimes there are too many and every now and then (like this fall season) there are not enough.

[Eric_Bartlett]

My guess is that 30 outages at a time and 50 seniors per outage are both very high. I haven't seen a 50 Sr outage in a while.

Figured I'd weigh in, since this is what I do.  Average outage crew is approximately 45 Sr. Techs, some take in as little as 25, some still as many as 100.  My biggest request this season was around 100, the smallest around 20, remove those from the equation and the rest of the sites average out to about 45 Sr. techs per outage.

As far as how many outages there are per season, the spring normally has anywhere from 30 to 40 (going back to Spring 2014 there were 2 season>40, the rest were 30-34 give or take.  The Fall season normally has a lot fewer, averaging around 20, give or take - this season is definitely an anomaly that happens every 5-6 years.

Hope I was able to shed some light on the conversation,

Take it slow,
Eric

[Rennhack]

Every 6th outage season is a heavy season, and the Spring of 2017 is looking like a whopper, it's the second largest since I started keeping track in 2004. Spring of 2011 has the record with 45.  An average season has 30. The variance is 7, so anything below 23 is 'light' and anything more than 37 is 'heavy'.

I expect the Fall of 2017 to set the record for lightest outage season on record, with only 18 outages. The previous record is Fall of 2013, with only 21.  Some of the recent plant closings are to blame for the new lowest record.  The 'average light season' following the 6th cycle heavy season is usually 23... so 18 really is light.

 

2017	Fall	19
2017	Spring	43
2016	Fall	23
2016	Spring	28
2015	Fall	30
2015	Spring	33
2014	Fall	23
2014	Spring	39
2013	Fall	21
2013	Spring	32
2012	Fall	31
2012	Spring	32
2011	Fall	23
2011	Spring	45
2010	Fall	23
2010	Spring	32
2009	Fall	34
2009	Spring	33
2008	Fall	25
2008	Spring	40
2007	Fall	24
2007	Spring	34
2006	Fall	35
2006	Spring	32
2005	Fall	23
2005	Spring	43
2004	Fall	25
2004	Spring	30
Avg	30
Stdev	7