In the case of a sizeable shutdown — in this case thought to have been caused by a bird, and affecting almost 20 per cent of the company's 115,000 customers across Hawke's Bay and to Taupo and Rotorua — it's not a case of simply throwing a switch to get the power back on.
The system needs to be phased back in progressively, to avoid repeating or even worsening the calamity.
On Tuesday, it took about one-and-a-half hours to fully restore the supply.
It is far from the longest outage Unison has had to deal with.
When more than 200 poles were brought down by a snowstorm on the Rangitaiki Plains in August 2016, it was clear many customers would be without electricity for weeks. Unison began hiring and buying generators from wherever it could find them.
When Cyclone Cook blitzed Napier, Hastings and Havelock North on the eve of Good Friday last year, it put an end to the notion of a holiday weekend with the family for many Unison staff, including the communications team of Mr Gough and five others.
"It took a full week to clean up," he says. "When the public spotlight went off, there was still a hell of a lot of work for quite a few people."
"The longer it is, the more frustrating it can be [for those without power], so it's important to keep people informed every hour and to let the teams get on with the job of restoring the supply."
He's been in the industry a long time. He ditched a possible Navy marine engineering career just six months in, did a stint in sales with Telecom in Dunedin, and joined the Dunedin City Electricity Department, long before the deregulation in the industry.
Napier had one of those too, known as the MED (Municipal Electricity Department). Later known as Bay City Power, it was bought by the Hawke's Bay Electric Power Board in 1991, and with the advent of the Energy Companies Act 1992 a path was started towards the establishment of Hawke's Bay Networks and the ultimate change of name to Unison in 2003, a company charged with directing dividends back to the public through the Hawke's Bay Power Consumers Trust.
Mr Gough seems the ultimate team player, perhaps reflecting his strong sporting interest.
Being appointed to the board of Hawke's Bay Rugby Union earlier this month was just another step in the sport which forms one of the three planks of his life, along with family and the job.
Straight out of Otago Boys' High School, at 18 he played the first of more than 180 senior rugby games, spanning almost 20 years. However, he missed the best part of them after a serious jaw injury and then, when he finally got back onto the field, a serious knee injury.
A first five-eighths who was a bit "naughty" a few times when he played rugby league on Sundays, he thought his rugby was behind him when he moved to Levin with wife Donna and their two young children, a big move away from the wider family base in the south as he took a job as a territory manager for Contact Energy.
Almost as soon as he arrived in Levin, a local clubman was at the door asking if he wanted to come and join up. He thought it would be a few social games, but ended up in the top senior grade, in which he played his last game at the age of 37.
He moved to Unison in Hawke's Bay about 11 years ago, having barely seen the region before but feeling a certain affinity, having seen Otago benefit from the arrival of a range of Hawke's Bay players who became part of the southern province's rugby rejuvenation from 1990, and who in some cases also became All Blacks.
Settling in Hawke's Bay, he coached his son's teams from the age of 5 up, and has been a mainstay of the Havelock North Village Wanderers Golden Oldies team, which will play the four Golden Oldies club days in Hawke's Bay this year, and might one day dream going to a major tournament elsewhere.
He's also been refereeing for the past four years. On Wednesday evening he refereed a Colts competition warm-up match which he said needed the best of his communication skills, as two sets of testosterone-driven mainly-teenaged players carried on as if the aim was to "rip everyone's head off".
"I've always enjoyed event crisis communications management," he says. "It's where the adrenalin flows."
He is talking about the job again, and the positives of a negative situation — the chance to recognise the efforts of those trying to get the power back on.
"They're often working in terrible and horrible weather, sometimes late at night," he said. "They are the real heroes. It's a critical job, and we have to tell the consumers that they're doing the best they can."
