Content courtesy of: WECA Utah Founding Member Contractor Hunt Electric

Getting the most from design-build delivery often depends on the quality of the electrical, mechanical, and general contractors you select. How can owners and developers identify the right design-build partners? Look for the following factors.  

Standardization: A contractor using well-documented processes will ensure a more predictable outcome. 

Trends in the AEC industry, such as employee turnover, make standardized processes critical. 

Engineers are retiring from the profession in far greater numbers than new engineers are replacing them. This imbalance, coupled with the immense demand for new construction in many markets, puts fewer engineers with less experience under greater pressure to do more work. This same trend applies to the field staff as well. 

By standardizing and fully documenting every step of the design process, a design-build partner can support its engineers with detailed documentation that provides clear guidance to help them make the best decisions in every design step. This standardization also keeps engineers on schedule. 

Hunt Electric anticipated this challenge to the industry years ago. We responded by extensively analyzing our design-build processes and standardizing them with clear documentation. This empowers us to support new members of the engineering team with the guidance they need to maximize the amount and quality of work they can accomplish with limited direct oversight. 

Our standardized and well-documented processes give you and the rest of the team a more predictable and complete electrical design. 

Constructability Reviews: Get a practical design that can be efficiently constructed in the field. 

Once the design has been completed, a good design-build partner will have a team of expert electricians with extensive field experience review and modify the drawings to ensure they can be built efficiently in the field. The constructability review forces the project team to confront and address potential conflicts with other trades and resolve them in the design phase. This process prevents costly conflicts and rework in the field by making changes when they are the easiest and most cost-effective. 

Read the rest of the article here.

WECA Northern California Commercial Electrical Apprentice Teal LeBeau’s path to WECA Apprenticeship was slightly unconventional. After serving in the United States Army’s Infantry branch as a specialist team leader and deploying to Iraq twice, Teal began an office job with an electrical engineering firm in 2008 before pivoting to other office jobs with electrical contracting companies over the years.

However, after working in the office for many years, Teal knew that going back into the field – like he was in the Army – was the right call for him.

“Working outside, being in the trenches, is where I am most comfortable,” says Teal. 

This led to him enrolling in WECA’s Commercial Electrical Apprenticeship Program and apprenticing for WECA Member Contactor Cabar Electric.

“As an infantryman, we trained constantly for combat deployments and primarily patrolled and reacted to contact,” says Teal. “I started my apprenticeship later in life, and because of how hard I had to push myself during military service, I knew I could push through the challenges that I face working in electrical construction.”

Though faced with challenges, Teal also enjoys the smaller, unexpected things about working in the commercial electrical industry – like being able to do electrical site work and underground work on venues like ballparks!

Teal reports that his apprenticeship has also offered more intangible rewards, ones that veterans will especially appreciate.

“Apprenticeship offers rewarding and challenging paths like the military offers. For me, it’s the closest thing I have found, as a civilian, that feels like being back in the military. My apprenticeship has helped give back my focus and discipline that drove me in the Army,” says Teal.

Thank you for your service and for being part of the WECA family, Teal! We are happy to read that your WECA apprenticeship feels like a natural fit for you and has given you back the focus and discipline that drove you in the Army. With your background, positive attitude, and determination, we know you will achieve great things with WECA and beyond.

WECA Arizona recently joined dozens of Arizona contractors at the 23rd annual Arizona Construction Career Days, held at the Army National Guard base in Phoenix. Also in attendance were 4,000 high school students from across the state!

Heath Anderson, the Outreach and Workforce Development Specialist for WECA Arizona, says "It was amazing to share this experience with several WECA Arizona Member Contractors. Corbins and Brycon hosted their own booths and sent students our way to have a full wrap-around conversation about electrical careers and training with WECA and our members. WECA shared our booth with Specified Electrical Contractors (SECON), which added to the experience for both students and educators. We spoke about career opportunities and the benefits of apprenticeship. We look forward to seeing some of these young men and women in our program one day soon!"

Dear WECA Community,

We're thrilled to announce the launch of our first original, WECA-developed virtual reality (VR) app for apprenticeship: A VR gaming app focused on Commercial Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)! 

Fourth-year Commercial Electrical apprentices studying Commercial BESS now get to practice on a real-world project complete with interactive jobsite simulations in VR.

This launch is the first in a series of planned additions of immersive and advanced learning technology experiences in WECA’s electrical and low voltage training and apprenticeship programs. The initiative was proposed by WECA’s Apprenticeship Training Trust Board of Trustees, who first envisioned WECA’s ability to develop industry-leading advanced learning technologies focused on XR (extended reality) experiences to bring exciting, remote, and complex environments into WECA’s hands-on labs and classrooms.

WECA approached the project from a modern digital product design perspective; beginning with interviewing WECA member contractors to gather and analyze their specific training needs for electricians on Commercial BESS. After a dedicated process of exploring and evaluating different VR development providers and platforms, WECA chose to partner with Motive.IO. The Motive VR Training Platform allows organizations to create and control their VR training content, with no code required. 

In our new VR app, students reference the plans, see the actual scale and layout of a BESS container, and explore and interact with PV inverters, transformers and switchboards. Using a map and checklist, apprentices walk through the jobsite and inspect the equipment, connections, signage and more – everything needed for pre-commissioning approval. Along the way, they get quizzed with questions related to Code articles and site-specific requirements. Keeping things fun and gamified, there may even be a few spots that require the apprentice to discover problems and implement fixes in order to pass inspection! 

It’s a journey of immersive discovery for WECA’s apprentices--and it's going on now at all WECA apprenticeship training facilities!

Read our full press release here.

Dear WECA Members,

A message from the WECA Membership Team: Effective January 1, your HR Platform Benefit is transitioning from MINERAL HR to ZYWAVE HR

In order to enhance your WECA Member HR Platform benefit, effective January 1, 2024, WECA is moving from Mineral HR to Zywave, an online, cloud-based provider of HR benefits that offers even more services than Mineral’s platform. Zywave’s product is easy to use and offers substantial employee and supervisor training options.

To clarify the value of this benefit: If you wanted to use Zywave by negotiating a single-use agreement with them, the cost would be $3,000/year, and that wouldn't even include the Hot Line and the Learning Management System (LMS) for the training courses. But because of your membership with WECA, this dynamic HR Platform is a member benefit that will remain free of charge by virtue of your WECA membership.

The Zywave product will be operational January 1, 2024. Concurrently with this transition, we will be presenting a webinar tutorial for our members so you can become well-versed in the use and functions of Zywave's offerings.

Those WECA members who are currently using the Mineral platform will have sufficient time between now and early January to prepare to exit Mineral and enroll in Zywave. All other members who are not enrolled in Mineral are strongly encouraged to attend our January Zywave webinar and sign up for this informative and highly useful HR service, compliments of WECA. The enrollment process will be quick, easy and painless……so don’t pass up this exciting WECA benefit.

Please watch your inbox for our follow-up announcements regarding the Zywave transition and our upcoming member webinar!

Questions? Please contact WECA Membership team members Jeff Van de Moere or Bob Bartlett.

Join Cook Brown Partner Carrie Bushman November 8 for Part 1 of a two-part webinar series on Prevailing Wage and Skilled and Trained Workforce. Part 1 will cover Prevailing Wage, including:

• Identifying and understanding the wage determination applicable to your project
• Taking credit for employer-provided fringe benefits
• Record-keeping
• Apprenticeship compliance
• Enforcement

Join Cook Brown Partner Carrie Bushman for Part 2 of a two-part webinar series on November 15. Part 2 will focus on Skilled and Trained Workforce, where Carrie will discuss: