This weekend is Labor Day. It’s a time we celebrate the impact that our teammates in labor have made on our lives – our working conditions, our quality of life, and our mission to keep the lights on. To all those in the Field working this weekend – Thank YOU!

Labor Day also brings a close to summer and an entrance into fall. Kids return to school, the weather begins to cool (hopefully soon!), and football kicks off. (Hook’em Horns & Ax’em Jacks!) -and- For us at APM, it brings Fall Outage Season.

Our teams have worked hard this summer to prep for an excellent fall. You are starting to see that hard work in the messaging we are putting out. For example, our Weekly EHS Report highlighted our 1FS “Arrive Alive” blitz, encouraging us to prioritize driving safety as we travel to jobsites.

And you see that focus in our most recent Monthly Quality Report. I exhort you to devote time to reviewing the good material in this report. Allow me to highlight 3 reflections I picked up on from the report.

1. The quality of our work is personal. Watching the FC video, I felt the pride of our Field leaders and teams. You can see in their faces and hear in their voices the impact this event had on them personally. (I don’t think its simply nervousness of the camera.) Our teams are human, they will make mistakes, they will get SQDC order out of place at times, but its not due to apathy. You do care about doing a good job; You do take pride in your craft.

2. Humility is a key character trait for quality. In the above reflection I praised you for having pride in your craft, and now I am asking for humility. Why? Many of our quality events and escapes are the result of not following a procedure. There may be many reasons or “excuses” for why we didn’t follow a procedure, but a key root cause is overconfidence, ex: “I know what I’m doing. It will only take a minute. I don’t need this procedure.” Avoid this human error trap. Have humility and rely on field procedures to help you deliver quality work. And of course, if the procedure is not working as planned or if you have an improvement idea, STOP and recommend a change.

3. The Safety Keystone disciplines apply to Quality too! Take a look at the “Proper mitigation steps” to avoid quality human error traps, ex: Task Analysis (STA), Hazard Hunts, STOP Work. We know these mitigations in the context of Safety. We are also applying them in Quality. That has been our vision from the outset of the Safety Keystone philosophy: The same plays that lead to safety excellence also lead to quality excellence and delivery excellence. We are now seeing it really take root in our Quality focus and results.

I am excited about our Quality focus. We have delivered excellent quality in the recent year plus. I am confident we will deliver excellence again this Fall when we take pride in our work, embrace humility in following procedures, and run the plays that have led to both safety and quality excellence.

-Jake