“We wear masks as well as gloves now, but our work in the field remains unchanged”

The health emergency has changed work life for many of us. Some have begun working from home, others have not been able to work, and for certain sectors the workload has increased. However, certain activities continue almost as normal, as is the case for Paolo Gorla, who is part of the technical team of Terna's plant unit in Brugherio, in the province of Monza and Brianza. Gorla has worked for the company that manages the Italian electricity grid for the last 12 years (“I was contacted after finishing school, and after a few interviews I was hired in Brugherio”, he says), and he deals with electrical substations: his daily work essentially entails the maintenance of high voltage systems.

“Myself and the team are in charge of replacing equipment such as circuit breakers and amperometric and volumetric transformers, as well as testing the electrical protections that control the grid’s electricity system”, he says, admitting that his working days have not changed much since the beginning of the pandemic. His smart working is not from home: “Our work is and essentially has to be field work. We use computers to simulate failures that could take place in the course of electrical protection tests, but that’s all”. However, constant communication with a colleague in the office, who prepares and organises the tasks to be carried out in collaboration with Gorla’s team, is fundamental.

Gorla and his team are currently active at the Verderio electrical substation, one of many Terna stations across Italy. Places where cables intersect and voltage and current are sorted by transformers and forwarded to every area of Italy: “We bring light to everyone’s house. We’re always in the field”. During this complicated period, work continues as normal, only with all the necessary protection and precautions. Respecting social distancing between personnel and the use of masks are now new but fundamental steps for the team, unlike the use of gloves, which were already in use because of the materials involved.

“We have less extensive work, but our activities remain the same: checking that the circuits are efficient, solving hot points and in general checking that all the substation’s vital organs are working at full tilt. Obviously, now we are more careful, as we should be. We distance ourselves and always wear the necessary safety equipment in accordance with company and general guidelines. But we are 100% operational and despite the restrictions we cannot reduce staff numbers. Teams are still made up of four, five or six people as they were before, because some interventions require the physical presence of a certain number of qualified personnel. If we didn’t have everyone, we would not be able to carry out fundamental tasks and the related complications would affect a lot of people”.

A delicate task, even more so now, when a service outage would lead to even more inconvenience than normal. Usage of electricity has changed, however, as those in the field can see: “We can definitely see a redistribution from the big industrial hubs to everyone’s homes, as there are more people at home than in office buildings now. Even the types of faults are the same”, says Gorla. “It’s the classic problems such as hot points, gas leakages or component changes”. So in Terna we intervene immediately and as we always have, but with a mask on.