Learn From Our Fails: The EPSS Reality Check (Sponsored by SENS)

Steve Works, Critical Energy Consultant at Works Power

Learn From Our Fails: The EPSS Reality Check

This candid, real world capstone session is an unfiltered look at why EPSS failures continue to occur in healthcare environments, and what facilities must do differently to prevent them. Drawing from decades of field experience performing best practice surveys, hospital EPSS risk assessments, contingency planning, acceptance training, and post event recovery support, Steve Works will walk attendees through the most common, and most consequential, failure patterns found in facilities.

Steve uses case based examples from real-life assessments and disaster recovery events to show where EPSS failures originate, including hidden single points of failure across generators, ATS, switchgear and paralleling gear, controls, fuel systems, and distribution dependencies. The session will examine why systems pass routine checks yet fail during real emergencies, how serviceability and logistics often become the failure trigger, and how “standards intent versus interpretation” can create dangerous compliance blind spots.

The discussion also addresses the healthcare “environment of care” reality, including how to plan for internal evacuation and operational continuity, reduce outage consequences through sequencing and preparedness, and improve resilience using modern tools such as digital recording, remote monitoring, and data collection.

Participants will leave with a practical, facility ready framework for conducting their own EPSS “reality check,” strengthening contingency planning, improving reliability, and helping ensure emergency power performs when lives, patient safety, and operational continuity are on the line.

About Steve Works

Currently based in Kentucky with Boyd Caterpillar, Steve Works has served nearly four decades as a Caterpillar Electric Power Generation technical representative. His duties include end-user ‘best practice’ surveys, operational training, Emergency Power System Supply (EPSS) maintenance and contingency planning, upgrades, repairs, and replacement solutions.

For over ten years, Steve was a civilian contractor tasked with training the US Army Corps of Engineers (249th Battalion; Huntsville AL) on Acceptance of Diesel-Powered Generator Sets (Course #106). Overseas duties included the revamping of EPSS equipment at the US Embassy in Sana’a Yemen, power plant rebuilds for Turks and Caicos, and US disaster recovery efforts during Hurricanes Isabel, Katrina, Rita, Sandy, and Helene.

In 2010, Steve was named as a Technical Advisor to Dan Chisholm, Sr (MGI / former Chairman of Technical Committees Responsible for NFPA 110 & 111); and in 2017, was appointed to those same committees. As the principal owner of Works Power / Critical Energy Consulting, he also serves as a consultant to assess hospital, university, and nursing home EPSSs; and regularly speaks at healthcare conferences across the US.

Receiving ‘CHEPP’ certification through MGI, Steve’s technical training and certifications include Caterpillar diesel and natural gas gensets, ATS and paralleling switchgear (ASCO, Russelectric, GE Zenith, Eaton) and industry standard EPSS controls and equipment (Woodward, Basler, AVO -certified thermographer, FLIR)