More than ever before, continuous education is the lifeblood of electrical contractors —necessary not only for doing business but also for staying on top of industry trends. Technologies like LED lighting, lighting controls, and whole home automation — as well as advances in generators, transformers, and other electrical equipment — increasingly require ongoing education on the part of electrical professionals to win bids, meet demand, and stay competitive. As such, filling any gaps in knowledge is essential to successfully take on jobs, meet the Code, and get referrals.
To complicate matters, veteran electricians are rapidly retiring, adding to the ongoing skilled labor shortage in the construction industry and leaving many trainees with the challenge of meeting NEC requirements largely without experienced mentors and traditional apprenticeships. Even when contractors are familiar with the NEC and other building codes, this does not mean they have the expertise or hands-on experience to select a variety of equipment new to the industry or size, install, and diagnose specialized industrial/commercial equipment. To meet construction deadlines, electrical contractors also often require a team that is cross trained in various skill sets. And the stakes are high, especially when it comes to safety training, as many necessary techniques can also be a matter of life and death for electrical contractors — two-thirds of arc flashes (some of the deadliest incidents in the electrical industry) are the result of worker error.
As apprenticeships and on-the-job training become increasingly scarce, and experienced electricians continue to retire, the gap in qualified instruction cannot be filled with video instruction alone. Video training and webcasts can be ad hoc, incomplete, and lack the ability of providing hands-on instruction, correction, and interaction. Many industry experts believe the best way to be taught still requires a personal touch — an approach you can only get in person by master electricians trained in the Code with decades of hands-on experience in the field to provide practical guidance. This theory was recently put to the test at several electrical contractors that opted for on-site training with Capital Electric, an electrical distributor serving the Mid-Atlantic states that established a series of in-person training sessions on a variety of technical subjects.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
“Technology has changed in recent years so electricians of any age, even experienced ones, have trouble keeping up without ongoing training,” says Matt Stumpf, vice president of operations at Partners Electric Service, Inc., a Lanham, Md.-based electrical contractor for industrial, commercial, and government-related projects. He points to lighting controls — with addressable systems, daylight sensors, occupancy sensors, and dimming capabilities — as a case in point.
“Lighting controls and fixture packages are about 30% to 40% of any electrical contractor’s business these days and growing,” he says. “It is also only getting more technical. With smart buildings and intelligent networked systems, every device needs to communicate, as well as be programmed by remote, laptop, or smartphone.”
While this market sector is one of the fastest growing for electrical contractors, a lack of ongoing training is a recipe for disaster.
“Without competent training, lighting is the number one place contractors can waste labor, time, and money on costly callbacks,” says Stumpf. “Every lighting controls manufacturer does things a bit differently.”
To keep up to date, Stumpf recently enlisted Capital Electric to train 27 of his electricians.
“The instructor went over all the products of a leading lighting controls manufacturer: what they do, how they work together, how they are wired, the signals sent to different areas, etc.,” says Stumpf.
According to Stumpf, the goal was to train his electricians until working with the products of all the major lighting controls manufacturers becomes second nature to them.
Putting Theory Into Practice
While most electricians have familiarity with the Code, without the proper technical expertise in sizing, installation, and troubleshooting in certain areas, they can still waste time and labor trying to deal with an issue or diagnose a problem that they do not truly understand.
“When a generator isn’t running, it is usually a different reason because all the brands have their own operational peculiarities in the field — so you really need to brush up on the technical end of it,” says Ed Walsh, owner of Walsh Electric, an Alexandria, Va.-based electrical contractor that services commercial, industrial, residential, and government-related projects.
Walsh had his electricians take a generator course to enhance their technical expertise. Covering all the basic codes to properly select and install an optional standby system generator, the instructor taught accepted methods permitted in the NEC for sizing a permanently installed generator as well as the proper methods for using each.
“The class puts you in a challenging troubleshooting setting, so you can learn to find and efficiently fix problems,” says Walsh.
Recently, Walsh sought to deepen his understanding of grounding and bonding — a key fundamental concept that’s not always fully understood by electrical professionals or correctly implemented in the field.
“Grounding and bonding can be a very complicated area, but it is vital to building safety,” he says. “If the grounding and bonding throughout the building is not installed properly — and there is a power failure or lightning strike — you can end up with a fire
and damaged or destroyed equipment.”
Walsh took a seminar on the subject instructed by Master Electrician and Retired Chief Electrical Inspector Wayne Robinson that walked electricians through the often-confusing NEC rules for electrical grounding and bonding to ensure long-term safety and reduced maintenance.
“The class took all the mystery out of grounding and bonding, which can be difficult to interpret in the Code book because the Code is written as a rule book and not as an instruction manual,” he says. “This helps when we do a new service installation for a commercial store or office building, so the inspection and construction schedule goes smoothly.”
According to Walsh, he noticed significant benefits from training with instructors who have decades of field experience, especially those who have the added vantage point of the electrical inspector.
“The seminar instructor has been an electrician his entire life and brings that experience into the classroom,” says Walsh. “He talks our language and provides practical examples that make the subject easy to understand and apply.”
Robinson, who has instructed numerous NEC courses over the past 30 years, provides some perspective on the state of the industry and the need for ongoing professional education.
“Today our industry is severely lacking qualified people to do the work, and there is so much demand,” says Robinson. “Yet we are losing experienced electricians and foremen to retirement so they cannot mentor apprentices and journeymen on the job.”
The result, he says, is that ongoing professional education is needed not only to close the shortfall in mentoring, but also to bring electricians up to speed on new technologies.
“For those in the industry who take advantage of ongoing professional education to become good, qualified electricians, the sky is the limit in terms of opportunity,” he maintains.
Williams is a technical writer, based in Torrance, Calif., who covers health, business, technology and educational issues. For more information on continuing education opportunities, visit www.
More than ever before, continuous education is the lifeblood of electrical contractors —necessary not only for doing business but also for staying on top of industry trends. Technologies like LED lighting, lighting controls, and whole home automation — as well as advances in generators, transformers, and other electrical equipment — increasingly require ongoing education on the part of electrical professionals to win bids, meet demand, and stay competitive. As such, filling any gaps in knowledge is essential to successfully take on jobs, meet the Code, and get referrals.
To complicate matters, veteran electricians are rapidly retiring, adding to the ongoing skilled labor shortage in the construction industry and leaving many trainees with the challenge of meeting NEC requirements largely without experienced mentors and traditional apprenticeships. Even when contractors are familiar with the NEC and other building codes, this does not mean they have the expertise or hands-on experience to select a variety of equipment new to the industry or size, install, and diagnose specialized industrial/commercial equipment. To meet construction deadlines, electrical contractors also often require a team that is cross trained in various skill sets. And the stakes are high, especially when it comes to safety training, as many necessary techniques can also be a matter of life and death for electrical contractors — two-thirds of arc flashes (some of the deadliest incidents in the electrical industry) are the result of worker error.
As apprenticeships and on-the-job training become increasingly scarce, and experienced electricians continue to retire, the gap in qualified instruction cannot be filled with video instruction alone. Video training and webcasts can be ad hoc, incomplete, and lack the ability of providing hands-on instruction, correction, and interaction. Many industry experts believe the best way to be taught still requires a personal touch — an approach you can only get in person by master electricians trained in the Code with decades of hands-on experience in the field to provide practical guidance. This theory was recently put to the test at several electrical contractors that opted for on-site training with CapitalTristate (soon to be Capital Electric), an electrical distributor serving the Mid-Atlantic states that established a series of in-person training sessions on a variety of technical subjects.
Staying Ahead of the Curve
“Technology has changed in recent years so electricians of any age, even experienced ones, have trouble keeping up without ongoing training,” says Matt Stumpf, vice president of operations at Partners Electric Service, Inc., a Lanham, Md.-based electrical contractor for industrial, commercial, and government-related projects. He points to lighting controls — with addressable systems, daylight sensors, occupancy sensors, and dimming capabilities — as a case in point.
“Lighting controls and fixture packages are about 30% to 40% of any electrical contractor’s business these days and growing,” he says. “It is also only getting more technical. With smart buildings and intelligent networked systems, every device needs to communicate, as well as be programmed by remote, laptop, or smartphone.”
While this market sector is one of the fastest growing for electrical contractors, a lack of ongoing training is a recipe for disaster.
“Without competent training, lighting is the number one place contractors can waste labor, time, and money on costly callbacks,” says Stumpf. “Every lighting controls manufacturer does things a bit differently.”
To keep up to date, Stumpf recently enlisted CapitalTristate to train 27 of his electricians.
“The instructor went over all the products of a leading lighting controls manufacturer: what they do, how they work together, how they are wired, the signals sent to different areas, etc.,” says Stumpf.
According to Stumpf, the goal was to train his electricians until working with the products of all the major lighting controls manufacturers becomes second nature to them.
Putting Theory Into Practice
While most electricians have familiarity with the Code, without the proper technical expertise in sizing, installation, and troubleshooting in certain areas, they can still waste time and labor trying to deal with an issue or diagnose a problem that they do not truly understand.
“When a generator isn’t running, it is usually a different reason because all the brands have their own operational peculiarities in the field — so you really need to brush up on the technical end of it,” says Ed Walsh, owner of Walsh Electric, an Alexandria, Va.-based electrical contractor that services commercial, industrial, residential, and government-related projects.
Walsh had his electricians take a generator course to enhance their technical expertise. Covering all the basic codes to properly select and install an optional standby system generator, the instructor taught accepted methods permitted in the NEC for sizing a permanently installed generator as well as the proper methods for using each.
“The class puts you in a challenging troubleshooting setting, so you can learn to find and efficiently fix problems,” says Walsh.
Recently, Walsh sought to deepen his understanding of grounding and bonding — a key fundamental concept that’s not always fully understood by electrical professionals or correctly implemented in the field.
“Grounding and bonding can be a very complicated area, but it is vital to building safety,” he says. “If the grounding and bonding throughout the building is not installed properly — and there is a power failure or lightning strike — you can end up with a fire
and damaged or destroyed equipment.”
Walsh took a seminar on the subject instructed by Master Electrician and Retired Chief Electrical Inspector Wayne Robinson that walked electricians through the often-confusing NEC rules for electrical grounding and bonding to ensure long-term safety and reduced maintenance.
“The class took all the mystery out of grounding and bonding, which can be difficult to interpret in the Code book because the Code is written as a rule book and not as an instruction manual,” he says. “This helps when we do a new service installation for a commercial store or office building, so the inspection and construction schedule goes smoothly.”
According to Walsh, he noticed significant benefits from training with instructors who have decades of field experience, especially those who have the added vantage point of the electrical inspector.
“The seminar instructor has been an electrician his entire life and brings that experience into the classroom,” says Walsh. “He talks our language and provides practical examples that make the subject easy to understand and apply.”
Robinson, who has instructed numerous NEC courses over the past 30 years, provides some perspective on the state of the industry and the need for ongoing professional education.
“Today our industry is severely lacking qualified people to do the work, and there is so much demand,” says Robinson. “Yet we are losing experienced electricians and foremen to retirement so they cannot mentor apprentices and journeymen on the job.”
The result, he says, is that ongoing professional education is needed not only to close the shortfall in mentoring, but also to bring electricians up to speed on new technologies.
“For those in the industry who take advantage of ongoing professional education to become good, qualified electricians, the sky is the limit in terms of opportunity,” he maintains.
Williams is a technical writer, based in Torrance, Calif., who covers health, business, technology and educational issues. For more information on continuing education opportunities, visit www.capitalelectriceducation.com.
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