Hughes pointed out that during the past decade electrical contractors had increased their share of total construction output from 8.6% to over 10%. In consequence, the industry had been more stable than any other construction sector and had, uniquely, increased its employment levels.
This provided a solid base for all sectors of the industry to work together to satisfy their customers’ growing demand and to improve their own business performance.
Outgoing president, Alan Cussen, noted that all sectors of the industry operated in a global market although their application base might be local. Therefore, it was important to make contact and to learn lessons from exchanges with other countries and economies. In particular, he applauded the ECA’s decision in drawing closer to its American sister association – the National Electrical Contractors Association of America, and welcomed the presence and contribution of its senior staff and officers to the conference.
American pie
NECA president Rod Borden observed that whilst traditional power and lighting installation contracts will continue to grow, the market for work in the voice-data-video sector will grow at a much faster pace.
There may also be increased demand in the future for a combination of electrical and mechanical services from a single source within the USA. There may be a blurring of craft specialities, and cross-training would be necessary, with ramifications for labour relations.
Borden continued that the single source contractor may also provide additional customer services such as financing, maintenance, and packaged residential services for housing developments, rental properties and the like. The trend towards consolidation of contracting ownership is relevant in this situation as many larger companies may find it desirable to acquire smaller firms that can provide speciality services.
The UK challenge
ECA director David Pollock noted that UK market demand was also changing to favour a single point of responsibility for projects. This had attendant implications upon multi-skilling, multi-disciplined contractors and supply-side distribution.
These were matters occupying the ECA’s attention via National Electrotechnical Training. It is continuing to develop a comprehensive training framework to provide National Vocational Qualifications at all levels of business enterprise including administration and management.
This work was being complemented by a study and development work managed by the ECA within a customer focus programme. This had established a series of key performance indicators for the processes undertaken by a contractor from receipt of tender to handover of the project. Individual companies would be able to assess their performance against these criteria and establish the need for additional training.
Labour matters
Sir Ken Jackson, general secretary of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union noted that labour relations arrangements and development had stalled over recent years and new thought and impetus needed to be developed to equip the industry to serve the economy in the future.
In particular, it was essential that working agreements were honoured and implemented. In turn these needed to reflect the growing convergence of electrical and mechanical services and the aspirations of the rising generations of employees.
The industry is failing to attract sufficient quality entrants and needs to address this problem. In particular Jackson would be looking to improve the pay and working conditions of electricians and technicians to reflect the growing contribution they make within the developing installation technologies.
USA today
John McKenzie, publisher of the USA’s major electrical title, Electrical Contractor, introduced its year 2000 survey of electrical contracting trends. These reflected the current economic boom, now the longest in USA history, which had boosted new construction work to 50% of total sales with modernisation at 27% and maintenance at 23%.
Commercial construction dominates the market with 28% of total sales followed by industrial with 26% and residential around 15%.
Around 50% of this work was undertaken for the main contractor but in nearly 40% of cases the electrical contractor worked direct for the client. However in 80% of all cases the electrical contractor influenced the choice of product used on-site, with 77% of purchases being made direct upon electrical distributors.
As confirmed by Rod Borden, there has been a growing tendency for electrical contractors to move into computer wiring, voice and data, fibre optics, power quality, sound work and home automation/entertainment. Six in ten contractors currently perform voice/data work. More plan to do so in the future.
Bright future
Osram’s UK md Robert Caban outlined the opportunity to exploit the tremendous energy saving and environmental improvement offered by longer life lamps, alternatives for high mercury content lamps, and legislation related to the recycling of electrical and electronic waste.
For longer life lamps he noted that fluorescent lamps at their introduction in 1936 had a life expectancy of 2000 hours. By the early 1990s this life expectancy had increased to 10 000 hours. New techniques promised an imminent potential lifetime of 60 000 hours – seven years’ continuous use!
Current fluorescent technology and the transfer from T12 to T8 and T5 lamps offered energy savings from 10-40%.
John Williams on behalf of the Lighting Industry Federation (LIF) outlined the measures being undertaken by Government to meet international commitments to reduce CO2 emissions through energy efficiency.
The UK government will introduce a Climate Change Levy in 2001 which will increase gas and electricity bills by 6%. This income will be put back into energy efficiency schemes such as Lightswitch, which provides rebates for users and training, promotions, and savings calculators to enable installers to provide advisory and installation services. Government is funding the Lightswitch programme in the year 2000 at £640 000. The LIF would like to see such funding increased to £6 million per annum and guaranteed for a ten-year period.
Stuart Gregory of Schneider Electric presented an alternative to current building control methodologies, the Transparent Building, which uses the building’s local area network (LAN) as a communications link. It collects information from all the different systems installed in the building and displays it in standard HTML (Hypertext Mark-up Language).
The main advantage of this type of approach is that no new communication cables need to be installed in the building since the existing network linking the computers in the building is used.
Keith Lowe and Ian Morrison of Newey & Eyre gave a joint presentation on the important recent development of e-business. Web-based systems provide the opportunity to automatically encompass all procurement activities from ordering through invoicing to delivery and payment. This gives process improvement, back-office efficiencies and a considerable cost reduction throughout the transaction for both customer and supplier. The cost savings include those arising from minimising incorrect purchasing or delivery details.
Eventually the use of WAP telephony will enable customers to make their Internet purchases direct from remote sites as well as their office facilities.
Michael Llewelyn and Mark Wagner, the two leading players in Estimation Inc (USA), gave the US perspective on what the Internet means in real terms for contractors.
Estimation’s Digital Market Place integrates the estimating and purchasing software used in the contractor’s offices to the software systems used by the distributors. Mark Wagner illustrated this by highlighting products in the estimating software, then referring these to a number of distributors for quotation.
The response was within minutes. It was noted that the facility exists to receive the prices, check availability, then electronically place a purchase order with the chosen supplier, who in time will electronically send an acknowledgement of the order, followed by shipping advice and eventually an electronic sales invoice.
The contractor continues to use the desktop estimating and purchasing software that is familiar to him, complete with its integration to other applications in his business such as job costing, etc.
Centenary
Following an overview of the improving safety record within stateside electrical contracting, Richard Flint, one of the leading motivational speakers in the US, provided an entertaining and thought provoking presentation on developing effective working relationships.
In concluding the conference, ECA president Peter Hughes thanked all the delegates and speakers for their contribution. He noted that next year’s conference would recognise the ECA’s centenary and would be held in Stratford-upon-Avon, UK, from 30 August to 2 September. He looked forward to seeing all delegates again on that occasion.
Source
Electrical and Mechanical Contractor
