EPSCO Culture of Electrical Safety: Lucas Bohnen (The Beast)

 

Family is a powerful motivator that guides everything we do at EPSCO. It’s our goal that every employee at every facility goes home safely to their loved ones when their workday is done.

So, when it comes to building a culture of electrical safety, having a perspective that sees beyond the job goes a long way to inspiring your team to learn, evolve, and reach their safety goals. Knowing an accident at work can impact a whole family’s life when a worker is injured is one of the reasons we’ve taken on the challenge of eliminating electrical fatalities by 2030.



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ABOUT LUKE |

 

Luke has a quiet strength about him. You might not know from just meeting him once that he is “The Beast” as he gets to work on-site. He’s always calm and friendly and a great person to be around especially spending time with him outside of work.

He is my mentor and explains everything in detail. Explaining everything to each new engineer who comes to EPSCO, he’s a great asset to our team.

If I ever have questions, he is usually the first person I’m going to call, and 99% of the time, he will know the correct answer. It’s great to have someone like that who is easy to talk to. No question anyone has is ever going to be stupid. He is easy to talk to and is a very knowledgeable person with a lot of experience in this field.

Probably his best quality is his ability to listen, which I feel doesn’t come around very often. I think that is why he is such a good engineer and why we love him here at EPSCO, and our customers love him too. 

LUCAS BOHNEN | ENGINEERING MANAGER, electrical safety coach

I’m Luke Bohnen, engineering manager for EPSCO. I’ve been here for almost nine years now. Originally from Forest Lake, Minnesota. Big hunting, fishing, sports guy.

I originally went to school as an electrical line worker. I pursued that career for a little bit before I came to EPSCO. I currently live in Oak Grove, MN. I just built a new house out there and got married a couple of years ago. 

 

What do EPSCO’s Core Values mean to you? 

LUKE IN THE FIELD, COLLABORATING ELECTRICAL SAFETYComing from playing sports when I was younger, The teamwork and collaboration side of things has always been instilled in me. Obviously, with the industry and the schooling, I went into, safety was always a major thing for me. Over the nine years I’ve been working here. Safety has really become much more apparent to me. All it takes is one mistake when it comes to this stuff and really just understanding that more and using it in my own personal life as well as my work life. Diligence has always been something that, anything I put my name on, anything I do, even in my personal life, I want to make sure I’m doing it right- I want to make sure people know they can trust that I’m doing it right.


What are your hobbies?

I’m a big outdoors guy; I love hunting, fishing, golf- I love to golf. Several friends come up to northern Minnesota every year, and we do a big 3-day golf trip. I love pheasant hunting with my dog, my yellow lab Buck. I love taking him out and just watching him work. Deer hunting is another big one of my hobbies. I grew up playing hockey and football, so I pay a lot of attention to the local sports teams here. Fishing is another hobby of mine; I’ve got a cabin up here in Mille Lacs, Minnesota. We do some Musky fishing up there or go up further to northern Minnesota to the boundary waters to do some fishing up there. 

Luke, as a person he’s a very hard-working guy. When I hear someone say luke, there is a smile on my face. He is passionate about what he is doing, so I love working with Luke and as a whole. He’s the best teammate in EPSCO I have. 

Lucas’ biggest strength is the knowledge and the background he has and being able to provide that knowledge to us and give us help and understanding when we have questions out in the field.

So, I got to work with Luke Bohnen on a rather large project, and I really got to understand why they call him the beast. This guy is a data collection machine when he is on-site. There’s no way that I could even keep up with him. He showed me all of the tricks of the trade that he’s mastered over the decade or so that he has been doing this. Not only someone who will ensure that the customer gets exactly what they need and want but also someone who’s great for the rest of us engineers to aspire to be the kind of engineer that Lucas is.

 

What do you like about being the Engineering Manager? 

LUKE IN THE FIELD, PUTTING ON PPE FOR ELECTRICAL SAFETYWhat I enjoy about being the engineering manager is being able to relate to the field guys. I came from the field, I’ve done everything they are doing, and I have a lot of experience being on different sites, facilities, and industries. My goal, being a manager, is to let them know that I’m there for them, and I want to make their job easier. I know the struggles that I personally had when I was in the field, and I want to make sure that the guys that we bring on and the current team we have now know that I’m here to try and eliminate the issues that they have onsite. I want to make their experience on-site just a positive one and not have to deal with the negative situations that come up. Because we are a nationwide company, we have guys that are onsite by themselves. I want to make sure they have somebody there and are not alone out there. I want to be a leader for them and help them do their job more efficiently and safely.

Luke is the main guy, and if you are working with EPSCO or in EPSCO, Luke is the best guy to contact about electrical safety. He has so much knowledge that he can relay a lot of examples. He is the best teacher of electrical safety. 

Luke is that person you can reach out to with any questions when you’re in the field. He has a lot of knowledge and a lot of background in this industry, and he is able to help us out with any questions we have. We have that with our entire team. Everybody contributes and has a lot of collaboration. We are able to reach out to each other with questions. We work well together and with our customers.

Everyone who gets hired at EPSCO is part of the EPSCO family- Regardless of what department, we are all in this together. From day one that I’ve been here, I’ve felt that feeling of a company family. We bring that type of feeling to the customer. You’re getting a company that cares as much about you as it does the employees. We understand that our employees are the most important thing we have, and that is what drives our company, which is the culture we want to create. A family-type culture, a safety-type culture. When you have that respect for one another, you are going to make sure everyone is working safely.

 

What separates EPSCO from its competitors?

What separates us from other electrical safety companies is that all we are focused on is all we do. Electrical safety, arc flash studies, everything that ties into  NFPA 70E that’s what we focus on. With us, you’re going to get a company that is dedicated to following the standard and creating a safety culture within the industry, within every single customer we touch. Customers to us are not just numbers; we want to make sure that they know they are part of the EPSCO family. When we do a job for them, we want to make sure they know everything going on with their study. You’re going to get a company that values safety as much as you value your people.

 

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