Certifications and Scheduling Management inside a Large Electrical Contractor
“Labor is where we get hurt and labor is where we make our money.”
Kipp Criswell
Field Operations Director
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Mid‑City Electric / Technologies is a Columbus‑area electrical and teledata contractor headquartered in Westerville, Ohio. The firm consistently earns industry recognition, including ENR’s Top 600 and local “Top Workplaces” awards. With nearly 30 years in the business, its Field Operations Director, Kipp Criswell, oversees electricians and manpower across all projects.
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Using Certifications and Workforce Data to Solve Labor Risk
Labor remains the highest cost, and the biggest risk, for Mid‑City. Managing skills, certifications and worker assignments across large-scale projects is essential to their operational success.
“Labor is our highest cost and it’s our biggest risk right now. Tools are tools and materials are materials. Those costs stay pretty consistent. Labor is where we get hurt, and labor is where we make our money.”
— Kipp Criswell, Field Operations Director
Each week, 30–70 workers are dispatched across multiple sites. To keep labor flowing smoothly and compliantly, Mid‑City relies on RIVET to centralize all workforce documentation. That includes safety training, CPR credentials, drug‑test compliance, job‑site certifications and even photo IDs.
“All of our field certifications end up living in RIVET,” Criswell said. “It eliminates a lot of that old process… now our field guys can just open that card and it should be right there. Recognizing who doesn’t have certifications and who needs to be re-certified has made us a lot more efficient. It’s made us safer too.”
RIVET’s tagging capabilities —for example, identifying bilingual staff, have streamlined rostering and workforce deployments. The centralized system has significantly reduced re-certification delays, eliminated redundant paperwork and improved safety oversight.
Improving Field Scheduling and Dispatch
With vast labor movements and multiple stakeholders, clear field-office communication is critical. RIVET’s Scheduling and Dispatch tools have transformed Mid‑City’s coordination process.
Field and site leaders including Criswell and Superintendent Nick Grant currently use RIVET’s Roster Board to plan weekly shifts. They’re now preparing project managers to submit scheduling requests directly through the platform, freeing the field team to respond rather than drive logistics.
“When you start moving volumes like that, making sure people know addresses, who they’re going to see… RIVET has helped us grow to do better at that,” Criswell said. “Our vision is that project managers are making those requests and they’re using the Roster Board more than us, and then we’re just responding to it,” Criswell noted. “When we start moving people again on the scale that we are, we need a process and a program.”
RIVET also helps preserve Mid‑City’s “family” culture amid rapid growth. Managers use photo profiles to familiarize themselves with on-site crews before arriving, reinforcing a personal connection—even on large projects.
“We still want to keep a very family touch… before we go out to job sites, [managers] will pull up pictures in RIVET, review who’s out there… and then specifically try to find somebody and talk to them,” Criswell said. “That’s a huge value… staying true to our core values and roots.”
Looking ahead, Mid‑City intends to tap into RIVET’s analytics for backlog visibility and labor forecasting—moving away from spreadsheets toward data-driven workforce planning.
“That’s probably going to be my next thing… being able to look at our backlog and do some of our projections based on data that’s coming from our field,” Criswell added.
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