Alongside Entergy Louisiana, Irby Construction Company has completed the Mud Lake – Big Lake Transmission Project. For over a year, Irby has been working tirelessly to bring energy reliability to the people of Southwest Louisiana through transmission and grid improvements. These improvements included 15 miles of transmission line construction, a new substation build, upgrades to three existing substations, and the installation of approximately 150 poles and structures.

The Mud Lake – Big Lake project spans Southwest Louisiana from an existing substation just west of Mud Lake near the Calcasieu and Cameron parish line to a new substation near Tank Farm and Big Lake roads in Lake Charles. Entergy knows the importance of grid resiliency when it comes to the strong wind storms and hurricanes that attack the Gulf, and that is why many portions of the new transmission lines were built to withstand winds of up to 140 and 150 mph, with a crossing at Calcasieu River and Intercoastal waterway built to withstand up to 175 mph winds.

Click here to learn more. 

Irby crews hard at work completing the Calcasieu River crossing portion of the Mud Lake – Big Lake 230kV Transmission project. 

When a major storm is heading toward landfall and most people are evacuating, Irby crews move in instead. Following storm outages, our top priority is to bring residents a sense of normalcy by safely restoring power as quickly as possible. Hurricane Idalia was no different, and in the wake of the storm, Irby deployed over 520 crew members across Florida to perform storm restoration work. These crews included line workers, supervisors, mechanics, safety coordinators, and storm damage assessors who performed transmission, distribution, logistics, and storm damage assessment work. In addition to this, Irby also provided various types of equipment and assisted with mobilizing the Quanta Mobile Command Center to a staged area in Perry, Florida. Project managers and supervisors from several organizations utilized the command center to conduct storm restoration operations.

Less than a week after Hurricane Idalia made landfall, Florida Governor, Ron DeSantis, announced that 96% of power had been restored. He went on to praise the thousands of brave linemen by saying “…restoring power to the homes and businesses of impacted Floridians is an important step in the recovery process and would not be possible without the hard work of our utility linemen.” Irby is proud to have assisted our customers, the residents of Florida, and our fellow line workers in the aftermath of Hurricane Idalia.

Read more about Florida’s speedy restoration efforts at the link HERE.

Irby’s top of the line equipment empowers our people and projects to be the best they can be. Casey Lawrence, Irby Truck Driver, and his family recently attended the annual Gulf Coast Big Rig Truck Show. This event promotes the trucking industry through competition and community with the core goal of supporting the Wounded Warrior Project.

The show took place on Friday, July 21st and Saturday, July 22nd in Biloxi at the Mississippi Coast Convention Center. Casey entered his Irby truck into the “Combo” truck class competition, which includes truck and trailer combination rigs.

Casey’s truck ended up being the very last truck to be judged in the Combo category. There were more than 90 trucks entered in the contest, and Casey’s Irby truck won two awards! Irby won First Place for Combo Best Interior, and Third Place Combo Overall. Casey said it was an honor to win. More importantly, though, Casey enjoyed the camaraderie, industry networking, and showing that he holds his truck to the highest standards.

Way to go, Casey!