When Julie’s kids complain about another student not doing their part in a group project, she tells them, “Get used to it. Life is a group project.” There are very few professions in which people don’t interact with or rely upon others. To put Electrical Contractor together, we get material from writers and researchers, and the magazine is designed by designers, edited by us, printed by printers and delivered by mail carriers. Feel free to email us your examples that refute that hypothesis.
As an electrical contractor, when you consider collaboration, do you think about your relationship with other trades or how to work with and around a customer? Does your list include worrying about the needs of your customer’s clients? Working together comes up in part 2 of the Profile of the Electrical Contractor. The survey asked how often ECs do business with engineers, building owners or other design team members, and with other trades such as mechanical, HVAC, plumbing and systems integrators. The answer is a lot: 74 percent report high or medium levels of project collaboration.
This month’s project profiles also focus on seamless partnerships. In “A First-Class Renovation,” Susan Casey writes about Morrow-Meadows Corp.’s projects at LAX. As the company’s VP of project management said, “We couldn’t have hiccups. Airplanes were in the sky and scheduled to land.” Claire Swedberg covers some major utility construction projects by O’Connell Electric Co. in “Powering Upstate.” The company worked with other contractors, meeting environmental regulations, geographical and scheduling challenges and coordinating with the utility companies.
In their Service/Maintenance column, Fred Sargent and Andrew McCoy touch on the relationship between low-voltage ECs and manufacturers in “Productivity Begins With Product." In “A Safe Bet,” Jeff Griffin writes about Oklahoma Electrical Supply’s upgrade of the electrical system at a large hospital, accomplished with as little disruption to medical providers and patients as possible.
The point is, to varying degrees, electrical construction is a collaborative effort. Those who attempt to navigate the industry without considering how their work affects other trades, the owners or the occupants will have a hard time. No matter where you enter a project, work with the construction team to accomplish the collective goals. It will go a long way toward establishing good relationships and achieving success for the project as well as your company.
About The Author
Julie Mazur
Managing Editor, Electrical Contractor magazineJulie Mazur is the managing editor of ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR, Safety Leader and Line Contractor magazines. Before coming to ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR, she was an editor at Knight-Ridder/Tribune newspapers and the Los Angeles Times and taught English as a foreign language in Egypt and Japan. As managing editor, Julie oversees the whole publishing arc. She plans and assigns the stories for every issue, works with writers and designers and interacts with the printing plant. She has a mass communications B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley. Go Bears!
Permanently retired from ziplining, Julie is an enthusiastic sports spectator and radio listener. She likes to read, exercise and cook.
JOHNSON is a writer and editor living outside Washington, D.C. He has worked in magazine, web and journal publishing since 2006, and was formerly the digital editor for ELECTRICAL CONTRACTOR magazine. Learn more at www.tjfreelance.com.
