# number of electricians?



## HARRY304E (Sep 15, 2010)

slm said:


> Do any of you work in large commercial / industrial facilities?
> My question is... I work at a manufacturing company that builds atvs and snowmobiles. The facility is in excess of 700,000 square feet. I am trying to convince managment that we need more electricians. We currently have 3 including myself. Some parts of our facility run 20 hours a day and if we have trouble we work overtime to fix it. Normal week is 50 hours year around and during the busy season it can be 65 hours a week.
> 
> Any input from guys at large facilities?
> ...


Welcome to the forum:thumbup:

Be thankful you've got a job like that , many guys out there can't get work.

If your boss puts on more men you may only get 40 hours every week and no OT,,,,I'd take the money and save for a rainy day.


----------



## dthurmond (Feb 7, 2011)

We only have 7 and two of them are straight out of tech school . We have had trouble finding qualified people since 2010 . It's the pay rate at my location . We run 24 hours a day 5/6 days a week . OT is nice but it does wear you down .


----------



## Kryptes (Aug 6, 2013)

My best customer is a production facility that is abit larger then where you are at. I usually have 4 guys there full time and rotate who is on call. If there is lots of OT available we try and break it up so that 2 guys work it for 2 weeks and the other 2 take it the next 2 weeks. Doesn't always work out cause some guys want all the OT and some want none (depends on time of year). I allow them to work it out themselves until I notice guys burning out if they are working too many OT shifts. Thankfully being a outside contractor we have the chance to bring in a fifth or sixth guy if things are too busy from our service truck department.


----------



## backstay (Feb 3, 2011)

slm said:


> Do any of you work in large commercial / industrial facilities?
> My question is... I work at a manufacturing company that builds atvs and snowmobiles. The facility is in excess of 700,000 square feet. I am trying to convince managment that we need more electricians. We currently have 3 including myself. Some parts of our facility run 20 hours a day and if we have trouble we work overtime to fix it. Normal week is 50 hours year around and during the busy season it can be 65 hours a week.
> 
> Any input from guys at large facilities?
> ...


Just down the road from you they have 40 working in the mill. The only thing that justifies more men is downtime. It's cheaper to pay 50 hrs a week than to hire a new body.


----------



## dronai (Apr 11, 2011)

Kryptes said:


> My best customer is a production facility that is abit larger then where you are at. I usually have 4 guys there full time and rotate who is on call. If there is lots of OT available we try and break it up so that 2 guys work it for 2 weeks and the other 2 take it the next 2 weeks. Doesn't always work out cause some guys want all the OT and some want none (depends on time of year). I allow them to work it out themselves until I notice guys burning out if they are working too many OT shifts. Thankfully being a outside contractor we have the chance to bring in a fifth or sixth guy if things are too busy from our service truck department.


Surprised that they don't have in house maintenance


----------



## Kryptes (Aug 6, 2013)

We have seen a few other larger production facilities get away from having their own in house electricians. We have alot to loose with customers such as this so we provide the best training and customer service we can. I worked as a in house electrician and I will say the guys were pretty lazy most days, break downs would take twice as long to repair costing their employer alot of extra money.


----------



## brian john (Mar 11, 2007)

Kryptes said:


> We have seen a few other larger production facilities get away from having their own in house electricians. We have alot to loose with customers such as this so we provide the best training and customer service we can. I worked as a in house electrician and I will say the guys were pretty lazy most days, break downs would take twice as long to repair costing their employer alot of extra money.


And they leave the payroll, insurance, bennies, permiting and the lot to you, I have seen this many times. It is a good deal for you for sure.


----------



## slm (Aug 6, 2013)

Thanks for the replys, We are in house electricians, prior to 2008 there where 7 of us, 5 with licenses and 2 apprentices.

When the economy dumped in 2008 we lost 3 guys to position elemination the 4th guy left on his own.

Our company is once again in a strong position finiancially and I am trying to get a couple more people added. Most of our upper management has changed since 2008 and they have only been with the company while we have had 3 electricians. We also lost the 2 low voltage guys that did all of the PA and computer/telephone cabling, we now do this as well.

Our PM schedule has been pretty much mothballed as most of the time we are fixing breakdowns and doing rush jobs.

There was a time when the overtime was OK but as I get older my free time is becoming much more valuable.


----------



## dthurmond (Feb 7, 2011)

My plant is the same way . We used to do PM but that is a thing of the past . Just keep it running until somthing major happens then well why weren't we doing PM . WTH !


----------



## eric7379 (Jan 5, 2010)

Where I am at, our plant is roughly the same size (700k square feet) and we have 6 electricians. 

We could easily keep 8 steadily busy, but that isn't our call to make. Yet management wonders why it takes so long to get some things done. Most of our time is spent chasing our tails on rush jobs and breakdowns, or doing a lot of research for parts because a lot of our equipment and machines are old (30 years) and a lot of the parts are obsolete.


----------



## slm (Aug 6, 2013)

Eric, sounds just like where I am at.


----------



## sparky970 (Mar 19, 2008)

I worked at a Chlor-Alkali plant about the same size and it was 2 jw's and an apprentice. We took care of all the electrical and instrumentation. 80% was dealing with instrumentation.


----------



## RIVETER (Sep 26, 2009)

slm said:


> Do any of you work in large commercial / industrial facilities?
> My question is... I work at a manufacturing company that builds atvs and snowmobiles. The facility is in excess of 700,000 square feet. I am trying to convince managment that we need more electricians. We currently have 3 including myself. Some parts of our facility run 20 hours a day and if we have trouble we work overtime to fix it. Normal week is 50 hours year around and during the busy season it can be 65 hours a week.
> 
> Any input from guys at large facilities?
> ...


As long as your facility is meeting the demand set for them by the marketing department and those who decide what the numbers should be you will not get more help., By working all of the overtime you are sinking your own ship.


----------



## backstay (Feb 3, 2011)

RIVETER said:


> As long as your facility is meeting the demand set for them by the marketing department and those who decide what the numbers should be you will not get more help., By working all of the overtime you are sinking your own ship.


Trouble is if he won't work the OT, he's fired and replaced. There's not a lot of opportunity where he is. That's why they built the plant there. There's Polaris, Marvin Windows and a ton of crop land.


----------



## slm (Aug 6, 2013)

The choices of places to work up here are limited. Where I am at the pay scale and benifits are pretty good, but it gets frustrating just patching things together.

Hopefully things will change, I still need to work for at least 10 more years before I consider retiring. I may just have to grin and bear it!


----------



## Spark Master (Jul 3, 2012)

With a 700,000 sq-ft facility, what do you do every day ? New installs, or just maintenance ?


----------



## Michigan Master (Feb 25, 2013)

slm said:


> Do any of you work in large commercial / industrial facilities?
> My question is... I work at a manufacturing company that builds atvs and snowmobiles. The facility is in excess of 700,000 square feet. I am trying to convince managment that we need more electricians. We currently have 3 including myself. Some parts of our facility run 20 hours a day and if we have trouble we work overtime to fix it. Normal week is 50 hours year around and during the busy season it can be 65 hours a week.
> 
> Any input from guys at large facilities?
> ...


We have 33 licensed electricians, plus 8 apprentices, and a large electrical engineering department. Not sure of our total square footage, or if that's even an accurate way to determine if you have enough electrical support (we have several plants all in the same industrial park).

We are primarily an automotive supplier and we run most plants on all three shifts and working weekends is fairly routine. We try to schedule weekend coverage so that folks can get every other weekend off if desired, but it doesn't always work out that way. 

Basically when we're understaffed and overworked we fall behind on PMs, breakdown calls increase, and we start bringing in outside contractors to help with projects. That usually gets management's attention and helps justify increasing staffing.


----------



## eric7379 (Jan 5, 2010)

Spark Master said:


> With a 700,000 sq-ft facility, what do you do every day ? New installs, or just maintenance ?


Situation for the OP may be different. Depends on the company and whether or not they are willing to spend money (probably not, at least in my case).

For me, a lot of it is nothing but maintenance and breakdowns. Some installs, but not many though.

There is a lot of what I call TUTA time (thumb up the a$$). This is time spent trying to track down parts, or trying to find replacements for obsolete parts. Updating prints, making sure PLC programs are backed up, looking up code information, and, of course, my favorite, spending time on ET! 

Trouble is, there is too much equipment and not enough electricians to keep up with it all and having managers that want to keep cutting the budget year over year instead of investing just a little bit to modernize some things. 

PM's have fallen by the wayside. I don't call it preventative maintenance. I call it prevented maintenance. When a machine is prevented from running, then we do maintenance!!

I love what I do because of the large variety of equipment. Each day is never the same. Some days are nothing but PLC programming. Other days are spent scratching your head trying to diagnose a problem that has never happened before. You have to understand a lot about the manufacturing process and sequence of operations in order to become a good troubleshooter, IMO.

I hate the place that I work at though.


----------



## noarcflash (Sep 14, 2011)

eric7379 said:


> I love what I do because of the large variety of equipment. Each day is never the same. Some days are nothing but PLC programming. Other days are spent scratching your head trying to diagnose a problem that has never happened before. You have to understand a lot about the manufacturing process and sequence of operations in order to become a good troubleshooter, IMO.


I want to get into PLC programming. I may take some classes. Sometimes we'll call in a PLC specialist.


----------



## maint-techNate (Sep 17, 2013)

I feel your pain slm, I work in a facility with a 960,000 sq. ft. Super flat, 5 mezzanines that are in excess of 500,000 sq. ft. And approximately 10 miles of conveyor. We keep only one electrician on each shift in a facility that runs 24/7 with 5 shifts. The OT is great most of the time but management could stand to get their heads out their own rear ends and expand our crews. If only add a helper or two that is knowledgeable enough to run wire and bend pipe.

I enjoy my job though, there never is a slow day.


----------



## Baker2605 (Jul 18, 2013)

We wait until equipment breaks. Then we do a full PM on it.


----------



## ponyboy (Nov 18, 2012)

Baker2605 said:


> We wait until equipment breaks. Then we do a full PM on it.


Lol.


----------



## fanelle (Nov 27, 2011)

Oh damn I thought this was gonna be one if those how many electricians does it take to....threads.


----------



## slm (Aug 6, 2013)

It sounds like Erik and I have the same management team.

We have referred to to our maintenance program as reactive maintenance "when something breaks or stops we react" or "crisis management" because when anything stops its a CRISIS.

The same with parts for old equipment, lots of time searching for repair parts.

We do the majority of our new construction and remodel work along with trying to maintain all of the existing equipment.


----------



## Spark Master (Jul 3, 2012)

slm said:


> We have referred to to our maintenance program as reactive maintenance "when something breaks or stops we react" or "crisis management" because when anything stops its a CRISIS.
> .


Did you ever do a study, to see if reactive maintenance or proactive maintenance makes a difference in machine up time ?


----------



## slm (Aug 6, 2013)

No, we usually do not get a lot of time for any type of analysis, unless our insurance company wants it. We install new to meet the minimum code requirements, and keep everything that is existing running as cheaply as possible.

Even trying to document the electrical system is seen as unproductive work.
When I started there where no electrical prints of any kind. The previous Master passed the knowledge on to me. I have bulled my way through making at least some preliminary one line diagrams from the utility to the branch circuit panel.

I have been the Master here for over a dozen years and I am the youngest of the 3 people that we have. 

I am trying to leave something for the next guy to work with, I feel for the sorry for that person.


----------



## Michigan Master (Feb 25, 2013)

slm said:


> No, we usually do not get a lot of time for any type of analysis, unless our insurance company wants it. We install new to meet the minimum code requirements, and keep everything that is existing running as cheaply as possible.
> 
> Even trying to document the electrical system is seen as unproductive work. When I started there where no electrical prints of any kind. The previous Master passed the knowledge on to me. I have bulled my way through making at least some preliminary one line diagrams from the utility to the branch circuit panel.
> 
> I have been the Master here for over a dozen years and I am the youngest of the 3 people that we have. I am trying to leave something for the next guy to work with, I feel for the sorry for that person.


I totally understand that feeling. We were also in pretty bad shape in that department and are still working through it. We were able to dig up as-built drawings for some buildings; however, most of them were just partial documentation showing additions that have been added over the years.

If you push for an arc flash study, which is something your insurance company should smile upon, you would be able to get one-line diagrams of your system done.


----------

