At Kaiser, Electricians Dig Deep to Unearth Design-Minded Customers

St. Louis, MO — When the downturn struck St. Louis’s rough-and-tumble construction industry, Steve Giacin, president of Kaiser Electric, knew that the electrical contracting firm would need to do things differently if it was going to survive and thrive in the unpredictable climate.

In the months ahead, when competitors of Kaiser began discounting services across the board, Kaiser held its prices and instead began sweetening certain deals by granting customers a steep discount on the firm’s more high-end engineering and design services.

“When we had exhausted our backlog and let some people go, we knew that it didn’t make sense to go out and bid on work that was going to go to the lowest bid,” explains Giacin, who says that a number of Kaiser’s rivals later found themselves locked in to less profitable work when the market began to rebound.

“Our thought was to deepen our existing relationships, rather than load up on a bunch of not-so-profitable work,” explains Giacin, who says that the firm began approaching customers it believed would garner the greatest value from the services. “We began by letting them know that this is a value-add that we can bring to the table for you, and you will not see any additional charges for it, and here’s how it’s going to work — so in a way, it felt as though we were giving them the answers to the test,” observes Giacin.

Today, Kaiser — a $24 million firm — employs more than 150 field electricians wielding a fleet of 50 vehicles that regularly canvass central Missouri and southern Illinois. Giacin says that its engineering and design services are now well established, having led the firm to more deeply penetrate certain industries, such as healthcare.

“What we came to realize is that we had electricians who were based at hospitals and other healthcare sites for periods of up to a year, and that this was due to the special demands of medical work that might include anything from infectious control elements to cath labs to MRIs,” he comments.

The healthcare industry sits at the top of a long list of Kaiser engineering services specializations. Nonetheless, one of its largest contracts of recent note is a $75 million biomass boiler project undertaken by the University of Missouri. According to local news reports, teams of Kaiser electricians were charged with replacing an outdated coal boiler with a new biomass boiler and providing electrical service, lighting, and control and instrumentation wiring on the project.

“Three and half years ago, we had six electricians in central Missouri, and today we have 50 electricians — this didn’t happen by accident, but through focusing on relationships,” explains Giacin, who refers to Kaiser’s field supervisors as the frontline salesmen of the firm.

“It doesn’t matter what I say we can do or what I say our capabilities are, if the field supervisors don’t communicate it and then back it up, the growth doesn’t come,” observes Giacin, who says that the firm made a commitment to its top field supervisors during the downturn.

“We said that until these people were all gainfully employed managing a project in the field, we wouldn’t be bringing in anyone new to manage a project — and that made a real difference — it sent the right message,” comments Giacin, who says that as the firm grows, so too does the challenge of staying in touch with the field.

Says Giacin: “I can walk on any job site today and know 95 percent of the firm’s electricians by name. This is a huge facet of running a company of 200 people, but they are the ones who bring it home.”