Garland Steinmann recently closed the books on a career at USA fleet member STP that has spanned nearly four decades. Hired as a Civil Engineer with Houston Lighting & Power (HL&P) in January 1975, he is the longest tenured STP employee. Following another stint on the turbine deck during recent Unit 1 outage, Garland is ready for some well-deserved time with his children and grandchildren.
“I’ve put most of my life into STP and I want to see it continue to thrive and prosper,” said Garland. “While there have been many ups and downs along the way, it’s the people that have made the difference. I’ve had a lot of help along the way. I’ve worked with a lot of different people and have developed some great friendships. Moving forward, I wish everybody the best.”
Hired by HL&P after graduating from Texas A&M University in December 1974, Garland started working in the company’s power plant group in downtown Houston. He originally worked on the Allen’s Creek nuclear project, a proposed BWR to be located in Wallace, TX. When this project was deferred, he worked on STP and other fossil plant projects.
He came to the STP site in 1980 as a site engineer, working in the Site Engineering Group under Gary Parkey. Garland worked on several projects during site construction with Bechtel on the engineering side and Ebasco on the construction side. After initial plant startup, he was promoted to Consulting Engineer in 1988 and served on one of STP’s first outage management organizations.
“Garland has been the model of professionalism and ownership that we all respected and admired,” said Robert McNiel, Maintenance Engineering Manager. “He would jump in to support without hesitation, day or night and no matter how long or how demanding the task was. He has always been someone whose word was as good as a contract. He has helped make STP the company it is today. ”
In 1991, Garland was promoted to Supervisor, Site Facilities and served as the engineering interface. Following DET in the early 90’s, he moved back into Systems Engineering working on turbine issues. Garland worked nearly every STP outage, serving as the turbine deck engineer. Throughout his career, he advanced through positions of increasing responsibility and held the title of Consulting Engineer Station Expect in Systems Engineering when he retired.
“The people have been great,” said Garland. “One of my fondest memories was in the 2002-03 timeframe. I had been working nights for several months during outages and my supervisor at the time, Dave Chamberlain, actually sent my wife flowers. She was so appreciative of that gesture and so was I. It speaks to the quality of the people we have here at STP.”
Dave Chamberlain recalls the story this way. “In 2002, we entered the Unit 2 Steam Generator Replacement outage. Garland went on nights as the turbine deck engineer. About a week after the end of a long refueling outage, the Unit 2 Main Turbine suffered the blade liberation event. For the ensuing forced outage, Garland agreed to go back on nights and resume his outage position, having just rolled back to days. At the end of that outage, we had repaired the damage but did not understand the cause. The unit was started with additional instrumentation, which revealed the problem. The unit was then shut back down to correct the issues. Garland remained on nights until the completion of the second turbine outage, which lasted until about a week before the scheduled Unit 1 refueling outage that spring.
“You guessed it, Garland stayed on nights for the Unit 1 refueling outage. In all, he essentially stayed on nights for more than six straight months.”
Born and raised in Yoakum, Texas, Garland and his wife live in Bay City. His plans are to work his land and cattle, and to also do a little fishing.
