Electrical contractors rely on a highly skilled and motivated workforce to maintain a competitive advantage and meet market demands. Having a full understanding of workforce issues and a grasp of the future marketplace is central to successful business planning. Strategic planning provides the focus and direction for the activities and allocation of resources in any business enterprise including development of the workforce. NECA and the IBEW need to see the future similarly for the workforce to be available to meet the marketplace. Contractors must critically examine themselves to decide what their specific action plan for the future should be and where they may need to invest singularly in workforce development.
Labor and management must work together to further the electrical contracting industry to maintain their competitiveness with the non-union sector. For many NECA contractors, this means working with local union representatives to enhance the future of the electrical contracting industry by sharing their vision and expressing their needs for training. In other cases, non-union contractors face the same challenges but without the strength that unions have to train, unite and mobilize the workforce.
In a different context, the future of electrical contracting does not have to be taking away business from other electrical contractors (ECs). Rather, it will depend upon the ability of some contractors to develop new markets while expanding their current market bases. Investment and risk are inherent issues for those contractors who will be the leaders in these new markets.
The purpose of this project was to examine the future systematically and provide general guidance to ECs and a process for visioning their company’s future. Because each company is different, each action and strategic plan that is developed will also be unique. Commonalities in the process can be shared to benefit the entire industry through interaction with the IBEW. Companies can also develop a unique action plan with the model for company-specific strategic planning in this report.
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A summary of two Electrical Contracting Foundation reports: Success Factors for Electrical Contractors on Design-Build Projects – This study looks at what a design-build project really is and corresponding benefits and risks and identifies the impacts of the design-build system on electrical contractors. Conducted by Drs. Victor Sanvido and Mark Konchar and Mr. Bevan Mace, Penn State University. Design-Build Methods for the Electrical Contracting Industry – This study examines the design-build methods in the electrical industry, training needs required to increase design-build abilities, and the influence of design-build in the electrical contracting profession. This survey of contractors revealed important design-build trends and preferences among electrical contractors.
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The purpose of this study is to enhance the financial success of electrical contractors by projecting the future of the industry. Such a projection will provide managers with critical information for enhancing their firms’ financial success. The focus is on where National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA) companies should be heading to achieve financial success. With proper planning and a vision of the future, firms should be able to thrive in the new environment and realize a satisfactory level of financial performance. Recommendations for achieving future financial success are also provided for initiatives in the areas of management, marketing, technology, and finance.
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Employees at all levels of management and labor spend a great deal of time and effort finding ways to improve their performance and the company’s performance. The motivations for this improvement can vary—they can include ensuring job security, securing a bonus, beating the competition, or improving profit margins—but these motivations do have a common thread. Improvements require measurements, and measurements are based on processes. To excel in the business world, leaders strive to have the best processes to create the best performance.
There are many obstacles to overcome when striving to discover, implement, and communicate these best processes, or, as they are also known, best practices. Management often faces the obstacle of “silo thinking” among its employees, where employees are unwilling to share their best practices with their fellow employees because they want to secure rewards for themselves. General competitiveness in the contracting industry prevents open communication within the company and between companies. The chaotic and frantic pace of the contracting business may contribute to a lack of communication between departments and employees, which is another barrier to the development of best practices programs. Obstacles such as these require a management solution.
The solution is to create a culture of knowledge management in the workplace. When problems arise with safety or quality or customer service, companies are willing to instill a culture or plan to solve the problems. When a company suffers from the inability to benefit from the knowledge that its employees possess or that the industry as a whole has to offer, a culture of knowledge management is required. In simple terms, knowledge management is dedicated to capturing, preserving, and communicating knowledge throughout a company. This can be done in a variety of ways, but the most important component is that all levels of management and labor actively participate in recording and communicating the knowledge of the employees, to whoever requires it, for the benefit of the company as a whole.
This report contains a best practices format and methodology as a starting point for this process, which can be tailored to suit particular management and work styles. Additionally, a guidebook has been incorporated to assist in organizing the best practices into an easy-to-use collection that can be updated. To help standardize the collection of best practices across all industries, a copy and discussion of the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) process classification framework is included. This framework is a standard format into which businesses can organize their best practices studies to allow quick referencing and sharing of information. There are many potential benefits to beginning a program of best practices. Whether the goal is to achieve a breakthrough in the industry, to outpace the competition, or simply to preserve the knowledge of an effective employee for later use, a best practices program can provide the means to accomplish it. This report gives the beginning or intermediate user of a best practices program a starting point and an organizational structure to ensure success and to help create a program that can grow as the company does.
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This report details the design criteria, methods of creation, and important characteristics of incentive systems. This design example not only provides a model for other electrical contractors but also encompasses the lessons from companies such as Lincoln Electric Company. The system designed in this report was validated using operational data provided by an actual electrical contracting firm. These checks, as well as other statistical methods that are useful for checking any incentive program, are included to allow companies to assess their own programs.
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The purpose of this report is to conduct a financial analysis of the fuel cell life cycle in order to determine when market entry may occur. The analysis has been performed on the life cycle of a 200 kW fuel cell unit, including initial costs, future energy savings and future costs. An economic spreadsheet produced by the Department of Defense is the starting point of the study, and it has been expanded upon to determine present value. The analysis is conducted using the time value of money approach that involves finding the net present value, the discounted payback rate and the project’s rate of returns. The findings of this study include:
Stationary fuel cells have the ability to produce electricity at efficiencies much higher than those of traditional power plants.
The fuel cell all but eliminates harmful effects on the environment.
Because of recent technological advancements, the fuel cell has become a viable source of energy in certain niche markets.
Prices are high. It is not known at this time when full market entry will occur, but there must be a significant drop in the $4000- $5000/kW cost for the fuel cell to provide economic benefit to the owner.
Government incentives for fuel cells and other distributed generation technology are considered, along with the effects they have on market entry.
Over the past few decades, the world, particularly the Western world, has become increasingly more dependent on electricity for day-to-day activities. Whether you rely on electricity to heat your home during the winter (or cool it during the summer), to turn on the television to watch your favorite program or to use the oven to make a meal, you expect electricity to be there. Unfortunately, there are times when the power is not there as you expect it to be. While this is an inconvenience, it is generally assumed that limited power outages will occur from time to time. Now imagine that this power outage of two minutes costs your business six million dollars. Is this “inconvenience” still so insignificant? Suddenly, the 97 percent reliability provided by the electric grid proves to be inadequate. This is an example of what happened to the First National Bank of Omaha when its building experienced a momentary voltage sag in 1997 (Armistead).
The outage that lasted mere seconds ended up costing the bank over $6 million per hour of downtime in lost transactions and wires. In these times of 24/7 account access, 365 days a year, higher reliability is required by institutions that offer these services. In response to this voltage sag, the First National Bank of Omaha installed four 200 kW fuel cells, which are devices that, like a battery, produce electricity from a chemical reaction. Fuel cells run on external sources of energy: hydrogen and oxy- gen. Unlike the battery, a fuel cell never stops working as long as the fuel source is available. The fuel cells at the First National Bank of Omaha were attached in parallel with the grid power system, which means both sources were used simultaneously to provide the building’s power needs. The fuel cells, purchased from Sure Power Corp., provide 99.9999 percent reliability to meet the bank’s need to provide around-the-clock account access. The added 800 kW of power not only increased reliability, but it lowered the peak demand charges the bank incurred from the electric supplier.
In the end, the fuel cell was the most cost-effective, economic solution to meet the dependability needs of the banking system. In regions where the cost of electricity is high and the cost of natural gas is low, fuel cells provide a cost-efficient way to offset the cost of purchased electric. Fuel cells are also found in niche markets where a waste fuel source, such as methane from landfills, is available (“Columbia Boulevard Wastewater Treatment Plant”). Electric utilities may offer lower rates to customers who are willing to accept reduced power availability, and a fuel cell could be part of the solution for back-up power during these power outages. Just as producing new power is important, it is also necessary to install and erect new infrastructure as a means of transmitting and distributing (T&D) electricity. With the current infrastructure operating at its maximum capacity, problems will occur when the demand exceeds T&D capacity. This happened in the summer of 2001, when California experienced rolling blackouts throughout much of the southern part of the state. Outages such as these can cause businesses to lose millions of dollars because of downtime or costs associated with the start-up of manufacturing processes. Installing new T&D lines to relieve this problem is both timely and costly to the electric utilities and, ultimately, to the consumers (Logan).
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The challenge for electrical contractors is to develop strategic implementations of CAD technology to remain competitive. This study shows that CAD is an ever-increasing force in the world of electrical contracting.
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