The following is a transcript of the Dec. 8, 2025, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now.
I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA's News Director.
Our guests on this episode are Kyle Treibs, Superintendent of Electric Department for the City of Fredericksburg, Texas, and Kris Kneese, Director of Public Works & Utilities, for the city.
They're here to talk about the city of Fredericksburg and the city electric department's achievement of almost 40 years without a lost time work injury.
Kyle and Kris, thanks for joining us.
So just to get our conversation started, I wanted to give you guys the opportunity to talk about how the city and its electric department's past and present crews have evolved over time to achieve almost 40 years without a lost time work injury.
Kyle Treibs
This is Kyle here and I'll answer that one here.
I've been here about twenty-two years.
Just to achieve that milestone of this forty-year deal… [the] electric department, the system and the department and the system both grew through size and complexity.
Just as in the early years, the crews are always -- we've always been a tight-knit group -- and supervisors have always worked directly alongside each lineman to develop that safe habit and that safe example of doing the safety work practices.
Supervisors and seasoned linemen that we had in the past and currently do still, we always try to teach that proper climbing techniques, whether it's lockout, tagout procedures, and just that respect for the energized equipment and having our senior guys also team up with new hires. That seems to be really important to us.
They do a ride along, they'll ride with the senior lineman or foreman for that first six months. So it's worked out really good for us, having that little practice of the ride along group.
But every employee has to develop that mindset of that zero lost time. It's not based on luck, it's based on discipline.
Every team member understands that you're not only responsible for yourself, but you're responsible for the other guy in that bucket too right alongside.
Paul Ciampoli
I'd imagine when you hire new people, that the bar is set high in terms of maintaining this achievement, right?
Kyle Treibs
Yeah, absolutely.
Again, we just try to always do a little refresher training and not only for the older guys for current practices, but even all the new technologies out there.
I mean, everything's gotten from analog to digital, and just trying to keep everybody on board and keep everybody moving forward.
Kris Kneese
This is Kris -- as Kyle mentioned, it's not only the training in the field with the latest technologies, but I'll also say the support of the council of our city mayor and our council members with the equipment that we have and testing of that equipment on an annual basis, if not more often, just really making sure that everything is safe.
The equipment they use, the training they get both in the field training, but also trainings from third party schools that we send all of our employees to.
Paul Ciampoli
I wanted to talk about the current strategies being implemented by the city and the department to maintain the zero lost time work injury achievement.
You may have covered some of this in the initial question, but I just wanted to give you further opportunity to talk about that.
Kyle Treibs
It's Kyle, and being able to train for that, our new hires, we do a five-year program.
We run it through the U.S. Department of Labor, and then also the Texas Electric Co-op Loss Control Program.
We use both of them to structure this and our helpers, they go through two six-month periods of just being on the ground, just learning, whether it's the tools, the trade, where the tools go in the trucks and just trying to learn our habits, basically.
And then after that, we do a four-year apprenticeship that consists of eight segments, three TEC loss control classes every year, week-long classes, and then plus the 250 hours of safety meetings that we do and we have scheduled every year also.
And then on-the-job training. Every task that they're able to do throughout [the] eight segments -- we have it labeled of, what you're eligible to do, where you're at, where we think you're at.
And it's well defined too, whether it's just your first step working secondary, alongside a lineman or whatever.
We take that serious, we support that stop work authority. That way every crew member has that ability to halt the job, if you see something unsafe.
So, before each job, like we said earlier too, we do tail boards, we do identify safety hazards, live wire, tree contact, weather conditions, terrain, we go over all that, anything visible, that could be a hazard out there.
So, we have a really, really strong training process.
Paul Ciampoli
Kris, did you have anything you want to add?
Kris Kneese
I think some of the distractions that we see across all disciplines within public works and utilities, whether that's cell phones or distracted drivers or what have you, some of that is certainly out of our control to some extent, but we put our guys in a position where they can obviously have the authority to tell workers that they have to leave their cell phones in the truck or, if it's not a communication tool at that time, they're not utilizing that equipment or that technology.
And then putting our guys in a situation to make sure when they're working in the street that they have the right PPE.
We pride ourselves using all departments within public works and utilities, whether it's utilizing the street department to do a street closure or something like that to make sure when the electric department is out doing their job that they're in a safe environment as well.
So, certainly the electric department has a really robust safety program, but we certainly rely on other public works departments to help them out as well to make sure, you know, they're in an environment that can do their job safely.
Paul Ciampoli
If there's one piece of advice you could give to another public power utility that wants to meet the same level of high achievement for zero lost time work injury, what would that be?
Kris Kneese
Kyle has mentioned a few of these already.
But I think it starts with the management, with the city council, the management making sure that we're listening to the guys in the field, making sure that when they make a request, whether it's for a piece of equipment or additional staff, that we're listening to those guys and we're going to bat for them, putting them, again, in that position where they can safely do their job, where they don't have equipment that might be faulty or might create a situation and kind of make them have to decide on how to do that job, but making sure they have the right equipment to be able to perform their job.
So, you know, top quality tools, reliable vehicles, latest climbing gear, we're a small department, making sure that they can get in those areas and again do their job.
But then, the other thing from a management standpoint, I think, and this is me specifically, I don't like to micromanage.
I put Kyle and his team in a position where they can do their job, and I'm not standing over them, really pushing them.
Obviously, there are certain situations where we have to get the job done or we try to get the power back on, but applying pressure in a certain way that could, again, create that unsafe condition is not something we want to put our guys in.
So Kyle mentioned earlier about the stop work authority. If they feel that something isn't safe, they will certainly stop work, regroup, and try to figure out a game plan to accomplish the task at hand.
I think those are a few things.
And then obviously all the way down to the newest hire that is getting that proper training, making sure, again, that Kyle and his team has the proper tools to train those guys, again, in the field, within the city of Fredericksburg's work task, but also getting the support from council to approve the funding to send them to those third-party schools so that they can learn as well from not only our team, but from other teams.
Paul Ciampoli
Kyle, do you have anything you want to add?
Kyle Treibs
Yeah, absolutely. Kris is exactly right.
And one million percent -- we appreciate all the support of our upper management, always asking, do we need anything? Kris is great with that. And then, relaying it further up the ladder.
And, as of our department, we really do appreciate that -- no productivity pressure, and no job outweighs safety and, we really, really do thank them for that.
At the end of the day, we all want to go home and we all want to be safe and go home to our families.
But there's three things that the last superintendent, Lee Stubblefield, always, always enforced, and we've kind of picked on that through hiring people is, that we are really strong with communication, to stay open with each other, constant communication between each other, the field crews or, whether it's identifying a hazard or just lessons learned, just to reinforce what we're out here to do and to do it safely.
Another one is attitude. Lee was real strong on attitude and we do that now still. I mean, we leave everything from home, leave that at the door.
We're here at work. We're going to do our job. We want to be positive, because one bad attitude can really ruin the day for a lot of people. And, we take it personal. It's our responsibility to have a good attitude and take care of each other.
And then safety standards at the end here, just to maintain that safety standard, set it clear, be specific. I'll tell you, enforce it -- updated technology, work conditions change every day. So we need to train on it, we need to use it and really just enforce safety standards.
That's really important because you're going to learn from somebody else's bad habit and we don't want that here.
Paul Ciampoli
And just for my last question, I wanted to give you both the opportunity to talk about how the utility utilizes each lineman’s strengths to manage different tasks of the trade.
Kris Knees
Yeah, I mean, certainly, we identify that during the process of hiring, but also I would say we look at that on a daily basis, putting guys in positions where they will be successful, knowing those strengths. It just varies across departments. I would also say that it's a physical job. So these guys in the field, they've got to be able to physically do some of the things and so there's certain folks that are a little bit stronger than others. And, they're put in those positions, again, where they won't fail. So both from a mental standpoint and a physical standpoint, we identify those strengths and those guys are put in positions to be successful.
Kyle Treibs
Yeah, to be a little more specific as of where our crew's set, you know, and Kris is 100% correct that we look at it at the hire -- we want that farm boy, that one that can figure something out, those are the good ones to look for, you know, out there.
But, our foreman, right now, he knows the vehicles, he knows trucks, he knows their strengths, he knows the limits of that vehicle.
And he's just really good at setting up a job, putting the vehicles where they belong, getting that employee, just per task. We might be set out between three, four different spans.
He's going to put that employee where they need to be to do that task.
And not only keep that safe work practice going, but also that finished job, make sure it looks good. We take a lot of pride in our finished product.
And then, we have two other linemen. One guy does really good at programming and testing meters. And, he's real thorough at that, particularly that real small stuff, he's very thorough on that. So he does a lot of our testing and programming. He does really good at that. So we kind of pushed him into that field, that area.
And then another lineman, he likes working solo. He's very safe at it. He's very good at it. Calls when he needs help, but at the same time, he enjoys working in the substation.
We don't own the sub or transformer, but we have our reclosures and our relays inside there. We own that part and he manages, maintains that stuff and alongside with the SCADA, so we try to find what somebody likes to do and then we put them in that.
We wear so many hats. We're seven employees right now. We have four linemen and three helpers and so we have to wear a lot of hats.
We do all our own metering, our own underground, overhead. We do it all. So we have to be able to utilize everybody.
Kris Kneese
I was just going to add to Kyle's comment there.
They certainly cross-train a lot of seven employees.
The goal is to have everybody a certified lineman again through the Department of Labor.
And that's the five-year program that the new hires are put through.
But because we are a small community, it forces everybody to be cross-trained.
And once you make lineman status, you're expected to do what any lineman, no matter how much experience, whether that first five years of experience or whether 25 years of experience.
So again, I think that adds to the dynamic and it adds to the respect that each one of them have for each other within the job.
Paul Ciampoli
Yeah, and I guess it goes without saying that if a lineman leaves the department, that knowledge doesn't go with the person.
Kris Kneese
Yes, sir.
Paul Ciampoli
Well, Kris and Kyle, thanks so much for taking the time to speak with us.
This is not a topic that we typically talk about on the podcast. Safety is though something I'm focused on for the next year as far as bringing greater attention to it for the public power community.
I know our listeners are going to get a lot out of this episode, so thanks again for taking the time to speak with us.
Kris Kneese
Thank you, sir.
Kyle Treibs
Yeah, absolutely. Appreciate it. Thanks for having us on.
Paul Ciampoli
Sure thing.
And also, you have an open invitation to come back, one or both of you.
I know you guys have a lot of other things going on there as well.
So just wanted to throw that out there.
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.
