As part of the Saskatoon Area Reinforcement (SAR) project, two new transmission stations—Aberdeen and Martensville—required connections to the existing fiber optic network. In total, approximately 40 km of new fiber optic cable was installed. As a member of the SaskPower TeleControl crew, our scope included pre-testing the reels of fiber optics before installation, splicing the fiber along the route, tapping into the existing line with live traffic, and terminating the fiber optics in the station with an all-dielectric final link to isolate the station ground grid from the main fiber optic line. During the project, we overcame two significant challenges:

• QA/QC: The fiber optics were installed without oversight from a fiber optics expert, which expanded our splicing scope to include QA/QC and coordinating warranty work.
• Ministry of Highways Coordination: The Ministry of Highways was widening a highway near our route, requiring us to reactively coordinate in the field.