Montana Meter Upgrade

Butte, MT, July 12, 2024 — When Dan Ness was in college, he bought a nice slide rule because he figured it was going to be a tool he’d use a lot.

But a few months after starting work with Montana Power Company, the company that would eventually become NorthWestern Energy, his office purchased a Hewlett Packard calculator with four functions — addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It must have been expensive, Ness recalls, because it was locked up and had to be checked out for use.

His slide rule, which was an advancement to the abacus, was now obsolete. It was 1974.

Ness, an electric transmission foreman, is celebrating 50 years with NorthWestern Energy. He started the company when he was 20 years old in the drafting pool department. He started designing power lines in 1983 when his supervisor dropped a stack of plans and profile maps on his desk and said, “Design this line.”

While countless things have changed over the course of 50 years, technology has been a constant.  In the 1990s, Ness remembers everyone got a computer.

“We had the computers sitting on our desk with the design program loaded, but we wouldn’t use them,” Ness said.

One day their boss came up to the group, and Ness remembers him saying, “If I see you making calculations on a sheet of paper, there is going to be hell to pay.”

It turns out the computer worked well, and since Ness had been designing long enough, he knew what the designs should look like, so using the computer was a double check for him.

In 2005, he joined the Transmission Line Maintenance Department. He would identify areas of transmission power lines that needed maintenance, then design the fix, coordinate the materials, coordinate with contract crews and schedule the line clearances needed for the work.

Nowadays, Ness still spends a lot of time on the road for the company coordinating large transmission projects. As an electric transmission foreman, he talks with landowners, coordinates material and clearances and creates the schedule. He also solves any design issues that pop up.

“I congratulate Dan on 50 years of dedicated, loyal service to NorthWestern Energy. Being on the road the majority of the time is not for everyone, however Dan thrives at it,” said Tom Pankratz, Director of Electric Transmission Engineering.

Even with 50 years of experience under his belt, Ness faces new challenges daily on the job — it’s part of what keeps his days exciting.

“I’m waiting for a day that I run into a problem I’ve already dealt with so I can just spit out the answer, but I haven’t ran into one yet,” Ness said. “They’re all new!”

Dan and his wife, Barbara, have been married 51 years and have three kids, four grandkids and two great-grandchildren. They were high school sweethearts in Whitehall, Montana.

He’s currently spending most weeks in Great Falls working on a couple of large transmission projects.

“Dan is one of the few employees that can really say that he’s covered nearly every mile of our 7,000 miles of transmission lines in Montana,” Pankratz said. “Dan has been a great asset to the company, and I really appreciate all he does to contribute to our success.”