An Electrical Contractor’s Workforce Management Journey: Part 1: Chaos beneath the surface

This series will detail how a market leading electrical contractor learned what labor chaos was costing them, how they solved it, and ultimately how they grew the business more than 400% over a decade.

Life as the general superintendent

For decades, Gary operated in what he now calls “controlled chaos.” As General Superintendent at a successful electrical contracting company, he was the go-to person for everything—labor scheduling, code expertise, safety oversight, tools and equipment, project layouts, and workforce management. The company was profitable, had a solid reputation, and everyone seemed busy and productive. On the surface, everything looked fine.

But beneath that surface, Gary began sensing something was wrong.

A harsh reality check

The turning point came with a major automotive project in their hometown. Gary had been reassigned to manage another project out of territory, and this new automotive job landed while resources were already stretched thin. When he evaluated the situation, the problems became undeniable:

• Severe shortages in manpower, tools, and equipment
• Costly last-minute investments to bridge the gaps
• Hiring inexperienced workers at journeyman rates
• Mandatory overtime that led to workforce fatigue and declining productivity

Despite completing the project on schedule, they finished with a depleted workforce and a damaged client relationship. The “success” felt hollow.

Recognizing the pattern

This experience forced Gary to examine their entire approach. He realized they had been taking on projects without adequate preparation—no labor resource profiling, no standardized scheduling, no systematic way to match workforce deployment to project phases.

The General Superintendent model, Gary discovered, was fundamentally flawed. He was expected to:

• Manage hiring and firing for all field personnel
• Assess labor requirements across multiple simultaneous projects
• Coordinate with detailing departments
• Monitor equipment usage
• Maintain code expertise
• Lead safety initiatives
• Stay current with union agreements

“This is simply way too much to ask of one individual,” Gary concluded. Small oversights in any area created big problems across the entire operation

The culture of dependency

Gary recognized they had created what he calls a “fiefdom syndrome”—segmented operations where the workforce managed itself through craft labor hierarchy, while Project Managers (responsible for profit and loss) were excluded from labor decisions. Field foremen operated autonomously without cost awareness, viewing project duration as fixed rather than manageable.

Most troubling was the dependency culture. Like “a zookeeper supplying fish to seals,” the company had trained its workforce to rely on the General Superintendent for everything rather than developing independent capabilities. Foremen couldn’t make code decisions, Project Managers couldn’t influence labor deployment, and no one had visibility into whether projects were truly on track until it was too late

The margin fade mystery solved

Gary identified three root causes of the persistent margin fade pattern:

1. Lack of labor plans: Without resource profiles, there were no benchmarks to measure labor consumption against project completion
2. Absence of project delivery timelines: No accountability meant delays and cost overruns became normal
3. No defined exit strategies: Projects dragged on without clear completion criteria

The false confidence of earned value analysis—based on subjective “percent complete” estimates without structured labor planning—meant they consistently underestimated remaining work while overestimating progress

The uncomfortable truth

“We were not ready for that job” Gary admits about that automotive project. But the lesson extended far beyond one difficult job. Despite being profitable and well-regarded, they were operating inefficiently, leaving money on the table, and limiting their growth potential.

The realization was both sobering and liberating: they had the foundation for success but needed to fundamentally transform their operations and culture. The controlled chaos that felt normal was actually costing them competitiveness against peers with more advanced systems and practices.

This awakening launched Gary’s 25-year commitment to process improvement—moving from supervising labor to truly managing it, from reactive problem-solving to proactive planning, from individual dependency to organizational capability.