Electical Contractor

Like many a novice, overworked contractor, I once found myself spread out on the dining room table making a takeoff when my teenage daughter asked if she could help. My first inclination was absolutely negative, but then I figured she could count symbols too.

Information technology (IT) is being used increasingly throughout business to improve productivity and has the potential to do the same for electrical contractors. IT can increase effectiveness by improving communications and streamlining work.

These days, if you’re doing only wiring and cabling, you’re probably in the minority. Many electrical contractors wisely continue to expand their customer base, capitalizing on a variety of market upswings in low-voltage systems and services.

A renewed kind of electricaL contractor has been created—the successful entrepreneur who sold his company into a roll-up and then bought it back. That, and several large utilities that remain important on the contractor scene, is the residue of the 1996-2000 subcontractor roll-up craze.

Since James Kelso and Oliver Burnett started pulling wire through the old gas pipes in downtown Chicago for electricity, almost a century has passed. "Founded in 1908, Kelso-Burnett Co.

More than 100 years ago, St. Louis served as the gateway to the country’s Western frontier. Today’s pioneers are technology firms, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and health care facilities. St.

Six Sigma is a program for improving manufacturing quality developed by Motorola in the mid-1980s and adopted and expanded by General Electric (GE) in the 1990s. Today, Six Sigma is being used by a variety of other well-known manufacturing firms as well as all types and sizes of service firms.

Just a few years ago, knowledgeable electrical contractors believed that the trick was to virtually “give away” an initial VDV installation, and, by landing a service contract in that way, capitalize for years on the very lucrative moves, adds and changes (MACs) that followed.

Supply-chain management is proactive and involves the optimization of the flow of information, materials and payment between the supplier and the electrical contracting firm.