By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, October 30, 2006

It's 7:30 a.m. In an office trailer in Prince George's County, Pepco engineer Kelly Sullivan, 27, studies a dog-eared notebook as a dozen co-workers trade jokes about the doughnuts and coffee. Pen and yellow marker in hand, she runs through the list of things she has to keep track of to coordinate the installation of a 5.6-mile high-voltage underground transmission line designed to feed more power, and more reliable power, to downtown Washington.

There are permits to be obtained from the county, buried pipes to identify, steel plates to cover up trenches dug in roads, 120,000 gallons of oil to bring in from Baltimore and drawings to complete. There's a complaint from one (but only one, she notes) of the 50 homeowners along the transmission line's path, and a delay in the arrival of some equipment, which was vandalized in another state. There are trees to trim and some reminders about safety: A week earlier, a subcontractor with a backhoe hit an existing electrical line and briefly sent flames roaring into the air.

The team Sullivan is coordinating on this chilly fall morning is made up entirely of men, and most of them are roughly twice her age -- like amiable special projects manager Walter "Skip" Newcomb, engineer Roger Cheek and veteran field technician Harry "Tex" Ritter, a tattoo visible on his neck.

But for Sullivan, this is easy compared with surviving the push-ups, the taunts of upperclassmen and the disciplinary "rat line" that she endured at Virginia Military Institute as a member of the first class with women in the school's 157-year history.

"When I realized that they had given me this project [at Pepco], I was a little afraid that I was going to encounter some folks who were a little hostile," Sullivan says, worried more because of her youth than her sex. But her rapport with them is easy, and she seems to command their respect.

"She's good at relating to people like me down here," Ritter says, "and then she can go downtown and sit at the wooden table."

Downtown at the wooden tables is where this project was hatched. A combination of growth in the heart of the District and the potential loss of a key generating station in Virginia led to the decision to add a new transmission line. If something happened to the existing line, Pepco might not have the backup needed to power downtown, including parts of the federal government.

So the company is trying to build this new 69-kilovolt transmission line in just 18 months, less than half the time it would normally take for such a project. That means designing and building at the same time. Most of the route runs under existing power lines on land where Pepco already has the right of way; a relatively small section runs through some private yards, and other parts run under national park land and into the Blue Plains sewage treatment plant. "This gives us another avenue for bringing power into the D.C. area," Sullivan says.

It is the sort of project that may be launched more often in the years ahead. According to the North American Electric Reliability Council, U.S. demand for electricity is expected to increase by 19 percent over the next 10 years, but the expansion planned in that time would increase total transmission miles less than 7 percent. "Without expanded transmission system investment, grid congestion will increase, making it more difficult for available supply to meet demands," the council said in a report issued Oct. 16. "In some situations, this can lead to supply shortages and involuntary customer interruption."

In the Washington region, as in much of the United States, a significant portion of the electrical power infrastructure needs upgrading. "The infrastructure in and around the nation is over 30 or 40 years old," Sullivan says. Moreover, as much as two-thirds of the electricity generated by power plants is lost along transmission lines; some cable-making companies are trying to develop lines that would be more efficient.

While the relatively modest-size line Sullivan is working on is expected to cost $70 million, Pepco wants to build within the next five to 10 years a $1.2 billion, 230-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line that would run from northern Virginia to New Jersey. It is one of three major transmission lines that have been proposed in the past year for the mid-Atlantic and Appalachian region.

That could mean a lot of change in an industry that is not known for innovation, and that would mean that companies such as Pepco will need more creative and energetic up-and-coming middle managers like Kelly Sullivan.

For Sullivan, sitting in a trailer in Prince George's County, working out the finer points of manholes and buried power lines is the latest stop in a journey that started on a cattle farm in Georgia, 15 miles from the nearest town. Sullivan started taking flying lessons when she was 11. She came by her interest in flying naturally: Her father, a former Navy aviator, worked for Eastern Airlines and, after the strike there, for United Airlines.

He moved to Colorado, and Sullivan, her older sister and her mother had to take care of 75 head of Black Angus beef cattle. That meant that before and after school, where she played three varsity sports, Sullivan helped tend the herd.

In her senior year, after checking off a box on her SAT indicating interest in military colleges, she received an application in the mail from VMI. She filled it out but did not expect to go there. No woman had ever been accepted, and she had her sights on the Naval Academy. But, she says, she wanted the discipline of a military school, and VMI offered her an athletic scholarship, for track and field. Of 30 women who enrolled that groundbreaking year, only 14 graduated with the class in 2001. Sullivan was one. (Two others finished later.)

As it happened, her toughest challenges weren't physical. Her mother died in an auto accident during her freshman year; her 34-year-old hammer-throw coach died the next year of a hereditary heart ailment. "VMI doesn't let you stop to think about it," she says.

After graduation, she took some time off and a couple of years later found herself going to a VMI alumni event in Atlanta. She met people, she talked, and in a week she had 60 e-mails with job offers, job advice or requests for her résumé.

She had originally planned to become a Navy flier and later a commercial pilot, but United had forced her father into early retirement and he suggested that she put her mechanical engineering degree to use. A VMI alum at Pepco, Michael W. Maxwell, vice president for safety, security and preparedness, helped persuade her to come there.

He put her to work on emergency preparedness, then, after last year's hurricanes, sent her to coordinate logistics for Pepco crews that went to help restore power in Mississippi. "If there's something wrong, she holds herself accountable -- more than most folks at Pepco, I hate to say," Maxwell says. "The utility industry is known for being stodgy." That's not a word that Sullivan brings to mind. "By giving her opportunities like this, we have a chance to develop her skills and get her to stay," Maxwell says.

Sullivan says Pepco has given her opportunities she wouldn't have had elsewhere. Besides, she says, "I'd rather be out in the dirt than in the office. That's what happens when you grow up on a cattle farm." She likes climbing into the concrete manhole blocks, scouting sites where boreholes are being drilled, soothing homeowners or helping to spot a crane that has to steer clear of overhead power lines while lowering a 68,000-pound manhole box into the ground.

But being a woman has its requirements: Outside the trailer on the staging ground, she has her own portable toilet with a lock on it. Ritter calls it "the princess potty."

Sullivan, who teaches kickboxing at a local YMCA after work, says she's been accepted. "Be yourself and give 110 percent, and if you do that, you're going to earn people's respect." She says she's not afraid to ask questions and doesn't pretend to have the expertise that others have acquired over 30 years or more. "These guys have vast knowledge and they are willing to share it," she says.

At the same time, she's demanding. At the trailer meeting last week, a subcontractor hadn't figured out what was once inside an old pipe that needs to be moved; Sullivan insists that they find out before breaking into it. When discussing when another contractor might deliver a drawing needed to lay some cable that's arriving in January, she says: "Let's give them a date. If we wait, then it could be until next June."

At one point the conversation paused, and Jim Slayton asked whether there are any "issues, complaints, compliments?"

"No complaints," Sullivan says.

"No compliments," says another person at the table.

"That just leaves issues," Sullivan says. And the meeting continues.