At San Diego International Airport, construction on the new half-mile-long, 1.2 million-square-foot Terminal 1 began in 2021 to replace the existing building, which opened in 1967.

Think of San Diego and your imagination may take you to the beach. But America’s Finest City, the eighth largest (and growing), is also a center for business, enterprise and education. While residents already enjoy a strong business sector, there’s more to come in new housing, entertainment and an expanding skyline.

The city fosters the key industries of healthcare, professional, scientific and technical services, as well as retail, manufacturing and education. Construction supports these sectors and is a cornerstone of the San Diego region’s economy, said Jerry Sanders, president and CEO of San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. Construction, he said, “drives innovation, creates jobs and helps shape the future of our area.”

New developments will help power San Diego’s economy and strengthen its communities, according to Sanders. Beyond commercial projects, residential growth also places demands on construction.

“New housing construction is essential to meet the demands of our growing population and support the region’s economic development,” he said. “Investing in construction is investing in San Diego’s long-term future.”

For the region’s electrical contractors, wide-scale and ambitious growth plans mean electric and low-voltage installation at civil, industrial, commercial and residential projects. Those wiring San Diego’s structures vary from large multistate corporations to small, specialized shops, all of which reflect the city’s communities and growth plans. Just a few of these companies give a view into San Diego’s electrical industry: 77 Electrical Services, Carlsbad, Calif.; Dynalectric San Diego; Moor Electric Inc., National City, Calif.; and Rosendin, San Jose, Calif.

Rosendin

Aviation systems and low-voltage at airport Terminal 1

At San Diego International Airport, work is underway to accommodate more planes and travelers, with a LEED Gold certification effort in a new terminal. Phase 1 of Terminal 1’s first 19 new gates will be completed in late summer 2025, and 1B will follow in early 2028 with 11 more gates. T1 will also house new restaurants and retail shops. Future sustainability could include a future 3-megawatt (or more) solar photovoltaic and battery storage system. And the new T1 will receive 100% carbon-free, renewable, grid-delivered electricity through San Diego Community Power. The goal is to submeter tenants in T1 to track utility use and work with them on conservation efforts to facilitate energy efficiency, said Nicole Hall, senior communications specialist for the airport.

Construction on the new half-mile-long, 1.2 million-square-foot T1 began in 2021 to replace the existing building, which opened in 1967. The project is led by a joint venture of firms Flatiron Construction Corp. and Turner Construction Co., both of which have offices in San Diego. Rosendin has a key part in the rollout of all low-voltage installations. Additionally, Morrow-Meadows Corp., City of Industry, Calif., is responsible for major site electrical, including the 12-kilovolt system for the T1 parking plaza and some tenant improvements in the new T1 building.

Master systems integrator

Rosendin’s role for the design-build project includes conduit and installation of the airport’s low-voltage system as master systems integrator, said Javier Pimentel, Rosendin’s project superintendent. Rosendin is one of the country’s largest electrical contractors.

For the airport, its work includes backbone and horizontal cabling for the massive terminal’s data requirements. A few features include connectivity for the airport operational database, with software and programming from Amadeus. Rosendin provides the 1-inch conduit pathway for service to the visual guidance docking system with locations at every aircraft gate.

For the building management system, Rosendin is installing conduit and Cat 6 SMB junction boxes. The company is also installing conduit for all work stations, kiosks, self-bag drops, self-boarding gates and printers.

The company’s team additionally installed conduit and Cat 6 cable rough-in for the energy management system, automated exit breach lane system and connected the LAN-SDN network. The electronic visual information display screens were also deployed with Rosendin’s conduit and Cat 6 cable rough-in, termination and cable certification.

Rosendin built the rack rooms, Pimentel added, including cabinets and radio rooms. They are deploying the video surveillance, video storage, queue management system and high-density Wi-Fi conduit and Cat 6a rough-in.

Overall, the company will install 4,800 cable runs with overhead conduit commissioning, system testing and integration.

When finished, the new T1 and related roadways project “will significantly improve the experience for our passengers in Terminal 1, bringing that experience up to the world-class standards reflected in the rest of the airport’s facilities,” Hall said. 

The new terminal at San Diego International Airport will receive 100% carbon-free, renewable, grid-delivered electricity through San Diego Community Power.

77 Electrical Services

A small business with civil engineering leadership

One modestly sized company has a large role in public projects in San Diego, headed by a wife-and-husband team. 77 Electrical Services achieved its contractor’s license status in December 2016 and began wiring government projects in 2018, starting with a school. The company has small business, women’s business enterprise and local business enterprise status.

At the helm is president and founder Mona Gocan, who has a background as a civil engineer. Her husband, Paul Gocan, is principal and superintendent and provides field management while she takes on business leadership.

The company placed its first bid on a $100,000 project at West Hills High School in the Grossmont School District, and won. The Gocans proceeded to other projects that included work at San Diego International Airport for $1 million.

Safety lighting in the courthouse

Most recently, the company has been completing a $2 million project with the Superior Court of California’s building in El Cajon. 77 Electrical provided electric construction for the life safety egress project, installed new electrical pathways and wiring for new fans, VFD, the fire alarm system and lighting. Electricians installed new lighting fixtures and controls, as well as site lighting and pathways. The company also installed some 330 exit sign fixtures and replaced more than 300 regular light fixtures with emergency lights. Altogether, the company ran over 30,000 feet of conduit and over 100,000 feet of wire.

While Gocan and her team are experienced in public projects, the courthouse has required strong planning to ensure the critical work of the courts and its judges are not disrupted. 

“It takes a lot of coordination,” she said, often working only in evenings and requiring specific badging qualifications for the electricians, due to the nature of confidential information documents at the site.

As each shift completes its work and electricians leave the site, the space needs to look as if they hadn’t been there. 

“That’s been challenging,” Gocan said, but the challenges are part of what the company excels at. “We love working on projects like this.”

The company benefits from Gocan’s civil engineering experience. She worked at engineering firms for years on public projects for San Diego County. At the North County Transit District, she managed rail bridge projects related to repair or upgrades. 

“Because of that, I knew what’s expected” from government projects, she said.

Gocan has an eye on the next generation of construction experts and electrical contractors, especially women. She recently addressed high school girls at the future construction leaders camp about electrical services and taught how to connect wires. She has also served as inspirational speaker for the camp graduation.

It’s actually a family affair, she said, as her 16-year-old daughter is part of the project, learning the basics of electrical work with an eye on a future in engineering.

“I’m very passionate about just letting the girls know, because I wish someone told me back in high school about all these different options,” she said. “Everyone was telling me, ‘you should be a teacher’ or ‘you should be a psychologist.’” Engineering or electrical contracting was simply not considered.

Dynalectric

Building California’s largest hotel and convention center

Some of San Diego’s largest projects are in the expanding hospitality sector. Case in point is the Gaylord Pacific Resort and Convention Center, part of the Marriott brand. It will be one of the West Coast’s largest hospitality facilities and Dynalectric San Diego, an EMCOR company, is providing the electrical work. 

The resort is the centerpiece of the 535-acre Chula Vista Bayfront redevelopment for the South Bay, 7 miles south of downtown. The expansive hotel has no less than 1,600 rooms, and the convention space measures 420,000 square feet on three levels. Once finished, the redevelopment will cost $1.2 billion and include parks, a beach and bike path, RV resort and residential development.

The redevelopment is led by a joint effort of the city of Chula Vista, the Port of San Diego and the Gaylord Pacific developer. Dynalectric is contracted to build the hotel and convention space, said Channey Doud, Dynalectric San Diego president and CEO. Dynalectric San Diego provides design, preconstruction and construction services for high-, medium- and low-voltage electrical systems.

The Gaylord Pacific project was led by general contractor joint venture Mortenson/McCarthy with electrical engineering from Blum Consulting Engineers Inc., Dallas.

Negotiating around the pandemic

“We began working on this project in 2018,” Doud said. The work was postponed due to the pandemic, and construction resumed in 2022.

Challenges began with supply chain uncertainty, extended lead times and cost escalation.

“This was mitigated by early release of long lead equipment items,” Doud said.

That poses its own challenges with the need for storage of early procured equipment. It also can mean material handling duplicity and logistics challenges, he added. For this reason—as well as tight schedules, the sheer size of the project and large numbers of players—the company has had to strategize each step in its project.

The work consists of almost two projects combined as one.

“Our preconstruction and coordination efforts had to be completed very early to accommodate the on-grade concrete pour schedules,” Doud said.

The prefabrication began with underground cable and related hardware, and workers continued with the rest of the electrical system, including design-build fire alarm, tel/data and distributed antenna system.

Dynalectric San Diego has had a total of 155 electricians on-site at peak. The project will be substantially completed in summer 2025.

Moor Electric

Serving civil projects from trolleys to dams

Moor Electric Inc. specializes in public work projects and is a family-owned, full-scale electrical contracting shop with a 15-year history. The company was founded in 2001 and incorporated in 2007, led by president Dwayne Henry. 

Henry launched his electrical business mostly in construction of vertical structures, then schools and fire stations. The company found that the best opportunities lay in public civil works projects, and it began developing a clientele in this sector, including utilities and government entities

Moor Electric’s recent work includes expansion of the San Diego trolley system, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) lighting and signage and Lake Hodges Dam work, Henry said.

Moor Electric installed lighting for the trolley bridge at UC San Diego.

Extending public transit

The San Diego trolley system, in place since 1981, has recently been expanded. The Mid-Coast Trolley extension travels from Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego to the University City community next to UCSD. The 11.5-mile project includes nine new stations.

The extension was part of the San Diego Association of Governments Mentor-Protege program, for which Moor Electric qualified as an up-and-coming, DBE-certified contractor. It will provide public access to other regional activity centers and improved travel options to employment, education, medical and retail centers for commuters and visitors, the city reported.

The University City area has developed as a major employment and high-density residential area, considered San Diego’s second downtown. UCSD is one of the region’s largest trip generators. However, neither had been served directly by regional transit services.

Moor Electric’s work was a 5-year project of bringing electric services to the extension, starting in 2016. The company provided electric service for the trolley extension and UCSD’s LED signage across the new trolley bridge that crosses over I-5.

Lake Hodges Dam

Moor Electric also works on upgrades. On the San Dieguito River, the water district operates Lake Hodges Dam, a multiple-arch dam that creates the reservoir that feeds water to the Santa Fe Irrigation District and the San Dieguito Water District. The 131-foot-tall hydroelectric dam was built in 1918 and recently needed a retrofit.

California’s Division of Safety of Dams had downgraded the dam’s condition from poor to unsatisfactory due to seismic issues. As part of the extensive upgrade, Moor Electric provided 90% of lights and additional services such as connecting exhaust fans. The company also replaced or upgraded the blower controls.

The installation brings lighting and power to the inner reaches of the dam. That includes stairways, tunnels and outer portions of the structure. The dam will operate until its replacement is built, a new structure intended to be completed around 2034.

Moor Electric has also recently served electrical installation needs in parks throughout San Diego and in Orange County. While Moor Electric is small, the company has navigated the world of public entities by catering to the customer. The company enjoys close relationships with the government agencies that are project owners.

“We have a more intimate relationship,” in part because of the company’s small size and versatility to work closely and more directly with the entities they serve. “We can just deal directly with the owner,” and as a result, he added “you get things done faster or you can just satisfy your customer in a more intimate level,” Henry said.

While the company may not have high name recognition, according to Henry, its work has been seen widely. 

“I don’t have the whole infrastructure of overhead that a lot of larger firms have. I’m not supporting a large firm with a huge rent and overhead and things like that,” he said, and ultimately, that is what helps the company succeed.

Photos provided by: rosendin / 77 electrical services / dynalectric / moor electric Inc.