Twenty Years Ago
This story begins in 2004. Personal protective equipment had already been introduced to the electrical industry, and several large American companies and utilities were implementing electrical safety directives. One of those pieces involved doing an arc flash study at a facility.
Bill Shinn, Don Bauman, and Hugh Hoagland, e-Hazard’s founding partners, had already begun training on electrical safety and doing research for arc flash clothing. When the opportunity arose to do an arc flash study for a large facility, Don Bauman P.E. took the lead as he had the experience and the software to do arc flash studies.
Requests for arc flash studies kept coming, and while Don took responsibility for larger plant studies, Bill took on some studies for smaller plants doing most of them by hand using IEEE 1584 rather than using software. At that time, Bill also expanded e-Hazard’s services by offering an NFPA® 70E® Table Study when one company expressed a need for it.
Don was a partner at e-Hazard for four years. In 2008, he died of leukemia. Another engineer, Ed Scherry, came on board and finished the studies Don had left behind. Then a couple of other engineers joined the e-Hazard team, Doug Black and John Aeiker. Over time, and as more requests came in, others joined the team. Eventually, Bill stepped away from doing studies, with Monroe Shock Absorbers being his last study.
When Lee Hale was asked to come on board, he took the bull by the horns and made the e-Hazard system of doing arc flash studies what it is today. While the other engineers split their time between arc flash studies and some electrical safety training, Lee decided to devote all his time and energy to arc flash studies. Over time, he honed his methods into a streamlined system that became, and continues to be, a viable and valuable part of e-Hazard engineering services.
As of this writing, e-Hazard has expanded to include ten Professional Engineers and three junior engineers.
