Guarantee Electrical Company https://geco.com RSS feeds for Guarantee Electrical Company 60 https://geco.com/Newsroom/Watts-Up-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/927/The-Strength-of-Trust#Comments 0 https://geco.com/DesktopModules/CM.NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=2867&ModuleID=5335&ArticleID=927 https://geco.com:443/DesktopModules/CM.NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=927&PortalID=45&TabID=2867 The Strength of Trust https://geco.com/Newsroom/Watts-Up-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/927/The-Strength-of-Trust The strength of trust is earned through promises made and kept—meaningful promises in which the keeping delivers fair value to everyone concerned.  But...the thing about trust is that the need for earning is never finished.  Customers and competition dictate that trust follows from perseverance and discipline, and an unflappable willingness to provide the service that’s expected.  Trust thrives on expectations.  Fail to meet them and trust evaporates. Among the reasons why a few companies that have lasted a century is that they take their own history very seriously and understand the value of keeping their reputations fresh (the diligence that earning trust requires). Yes, building a lasting reputation for quality is about pride; but they have also been able to encourage internal culture of trust among the people who form the leadership and the teams who deliver the work and achieve its results.  Companies whose business involve technology were established to accommodate innovation and end up being sustained over decades by family involvement with the dictates of craft where skills take years to develop—especially in disciplines where change is nearly constant. Guarantee Electrical Company takes its name from their original “guarantee”, which was to provide power and light to the World’s Fair in St. Louis in 1904.  That assurance of trust was realized then, and has been continued in hundreds of iterations over the succeeding 116 years. Recently these traditional structures have evolved into robust models of employee ownership coupled with management techniques that feature collaboration and teamwork internally and between the company and its partners.  Trust is the first requirement of craftsmanship and in many respects constitutes the first best practice anywhere that expertise is essential to performance: whether in professions like medicine, law and engineering, or wherever technical know-how drives the work being done.  Trust is at the heart of safety in the construction industry, and especially in electrical work, where trust has to be earned every working day.  Among the ingredients that breed such trust is internal cohesion—formed from trust created between workers and their supervisors, and between contractors and their subs.  The first happens in an environment characterized by fair dealing and clear communications.  Challenges are easier to meet when directions are clear, and where workers are free both to ask questions and to make suggestions about means and methods.  Interdisciplinary trust is in many ways more complicated.  Traditional silos of the trades can interfere or not, depending on the openness of the team members to sharing ideas. Among recent improvements in construction technology has been the role modeling software has had in improving the quality of field operations.  Through shared access to a well-executed 3-dimensional model, collaboration becomes the norm as the trades can better anticipate and respond to potential clashes without losing time, money.  Having and sharing access the model fosters trust.  Without that cohesion, doubt and suspicion replace teamwork that’s based on the sense of promises made and kept between partners.  Every project that goes well demonstrates layers of cohesion.  The jobs that don’t aren’t just unlucky.  They’re undermined by mistrust that often takes the form of silos of special interest and knowledge Trust is integral to life and work, and serves at the heart of what makes great teams successful over time.  Because in the end, customers expect to obtain the best value for the best work.  And when they can regularly trust in outcomes that bring these two superlatives together, they’ll stay with that team and prefer them to the competition. GECO Admin Tue, 08 May 2018 13:10:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:927 https://geco.com/Newsroom/Watts-Up-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/894/The-Strength-of-Safety#Comments 0 https://geco.com/DesktopModules/CM.NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=2867&ModuleID=5335&ArticleID=894 https://geco.com:443/DesktopModules/CM.NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=894&PortalID=45&TabID=2867 The Strength of Safety https://geco.com/Newsroom/Watts-Up-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/894/The-Strength-of-Safety Among the indicators of quality in the construction industry and among its leading best practices is the presence of and consistent adherence to a strong safety program. Understanding that hazards exist everywhere, on and off the job, it is a responsibility of everyone in the organization to sustain a culture of safety competence, going beyond mere compliance with corporate rules, policies and supervisory controls.  True competence involves internalizing and embodying complete command of a given set of skills and best practices.  The watchword for safety competence is care: for one’s self and everyone around us—co-workers, partners and customer personnel.  In this culture, the strength of safety involves: Maintaining a safety-mindset for everyone in the company, from the CEO down to the youngest apprentice.  This means zero tolerance of risk-inducing behaviors, hazards and other conditions that could affect the health and safety of ourselves and employees; both on and off the job.  Contractors who regard safety as a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) bring safety into the culture of the company. Being proactive. This means that demanding that each member of the team is alert to and is responsible for the safety of everyone immediately around them.  This goes beyond awareness of hazards and includes empowering all to take action to eliminate them.  Ultimately, this can mean that any worker can call for a work stoppage if they perceive that conditions have created or might result in risks to the safety or health of anyone in that environment. Encouraging behaviors that see the environment clearly—including the people working in it—to identify hazards and avoid risks amid the continuous changes that naturally happen as work progresses on the job site. Understanding that safety fosters trust between workers and their supervisory leadership, trust that in the end can yield significant improvements in collaboration, efficiency, customer value and even ultimately financial performance. It should be no surprise that an effective safety program creates assurance and peace of  mind for every member of the construction team, as well as everyone involved with construction projects including partners and customer personnel.  The long-term outcome of pursuing safety as a powerful best practice is that it becomes the hallmark of the well-run enterprise whose characteristics should also include enhanced morale and successful financial performance, as well as a reputation for consistency and quality, and genuine care for employees. It’s also well to remember that the ultimate goal of following safe construction practices is for everyone in the organization to get home safely every day without injury or work induced illness and to feel valued for their contribution and that they cared for as a person. GECO Admin Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:07:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:894 https://geco.com/Newsroom/Watts-Up-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/885/Reaping-Amerens-Incentive-Savings-with-a-BizSavers-Lighting-Retrofit#Comments 0 https://geco.com/DesktopModules/CM.NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=2867&ModuleID=5335&ArticleID=885 https://geco.com:443/DesktopModules/CM.NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=885&PortalID=45&TabID=2867 Reaping Ameren’s Incentive Savings, with a BizSavers® Lighting Retrofit https://geco.com/Newsroom/Watts-Up-Blog/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/885/Reaping-Amerens-Incentive-Savings-with-a-BizSavers-Lighting-Retrofit Ameren incentives have returned in Missouri….well, partially.  Ameren’s highly fruitful incentives and rebates programs have been incredibly successful at both stimulating adoption of new and incredibly effective energy saving technologies and driving unit costs down.  The three-year incentive program that ended in November of 2015 applied some $100 million toward achieving efficiency and managed to accumulate energy savings reaching the equivalent of some one million megawatt hours of electricity. However, due to a disagreement about methods for measuring these savings, the State of Missouri last October rejected Ameren’s request for a three year renewal, and the program effectively ended in January, 2016.  However, the momentum achieved and the benefits enjoyed by property owners, residential and commercial, have been such that almost nobody wants to stop working on keeping the process alive.  In fact, Ameren killed their major appliances incentive programs; but they’ve retained parts of their program, especially those that favor continuing adoption of LED lighting.  For consumers of electricity the lighting revolution continues to advance.  Individual households and business are reaping tremendous savings, simply by replacing traditional incandescent and fluorescent fixtures with new lamps featuring new highly efficient fluorescent technology as well as light emitting diodes (LED).  Producing substantially brighter and cooler light with a fraction of the power coupled with lifespans for luminaires measured in years rather than months, these new lighting systems have been selling themselves, especially lately as unit prices have plummeted.  Ameren, of course, is interested in anything that saves energy and enables them to postpone the construction of new power plants as their coal dependent generation facilities become increasingly subject to environmental restrictions. Hence, their willingness to continue with BizSavers their lighting incentive program in Missouri.  Almost any example you choose will illustrate the bargain that Missouri property owners and managers can realize in replacing old, inefficient lighting.  Consider the case of Office Essentials, an office supplies wholesaler with a warehouse in Vinita Park.  Recently, Guarantee Electrical Company’s Quick Response team replaced ninety five (95) - 8' T12 strips and fifty five (55) - 400 watt Metal Halide fixtures with a total of only forty one (41) - 54 watt T5HO fixtures across Office Essential’s high bay warehouse space.  In addition to earning a net incentive of approximately $4,600, the customer is realizing a reduction in annual costs of close to $9,000, with a two year payback of the total $22,000 in initial expenses. The improvement in coverage and brightness of light in the warehouse are nothing less than remarkable.   The vibrancy doesn’t stop at the light fixture, however.  Office Essentials has seen an unintended value of a more productive workforce in the warehouse, which has been immeasurable to company.   Thu, 16 Jun 2016 19:29:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:885