WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, APG GETS TOUGHER

Hanging some of the over 1,700 light fixtures at Raymond James Stadium

Kurt Osik working in a switchboard at PGT Industries

Augustine Tapia feeding CAT6 cable at USAA Crosstown

With construction booming across the state and cranes lining the skyline of Tampa Bay, APG is breaking all-time records for jobs under contract and we’re privileged to be a part of some truly exciting projects. Many of them have unusually tight deadlines, and our field teams have been putting in long hours all summer to finish them the APG way: on schedule.
 
It’s no secret that staffing projects and growing a skilled workforce has become an industry-wide challenge. Even so, we’ve been amazed by the number of new team members choosing to begin their electrical careers here at APG. We’ve hired more than 80 people this year alone! These men and women are quickly building their skills under the mentorship of our more experienced electricians while working on some fast-paced and demanding jobs. Many of them also attend apprenticeship classes at night, making their dedication all the more impressive.
 
Meeting tight deadlines on complicated, large-scale projects takes an above and beyond effort from our crews in the field, and APG has several of them under construction at the same time. One in particular is the continued renovation of Raymond James Stadium. Now in its third phase, all work has to be done during this year’s offseason so that the stadium is totally finished and ready to welcome fans by Opening Day. To meet that deadline, our field techs have been putting in very long days with many of them working 70-80 hours per week. Every weekend, over 80 of our techs routinely put their lives on hold to carry this project into the end zone. On the other side of the bay, our crews at the St. Petersburg Police Headquarters have been putting in unusually long hours, even gathering a crew of 40 techs on the weekends. Going south to Venice, our team really stepped up by working on a project on the fourth of July to support the glass manufacturing plant at PGT Industries.
 
All this extra effort isn’t just coming from our Construction Group; our Service and Technology Groups have been working around the clock too. Service has been extremely busy with major shutdowns at Catalent, Linvatec, and Sheraton Sand Key, while Technology is doing an unprecedented amount of work at USAA Crosstown. In just two months, our Technology crew has installed nearly 1 million feet (over 180 miles!) of cabling as they build out twelve telecom rooms and provide complete audio/visual integration of nearly one hundred other rooms at USAA alone. To accomplish this incredible feat, a crew of twelve has been working nights and weekends, putting in up to 80 hours per week. 
 
These are just a few of our ongoing projects that require significant overtime. The Ringling College Student Housing building had a mandatory 6-day workweek with an accelerated schedule, and crews at the Atlanta Braves Stadium and many others have been working well over 40 hours per week to stay on track.
 
The more than 300 men and women at the front lines of our projects in the field are the lifeblood of APG. They put their skills to the test every single day as they carefully lay out miles of underground conduit, install perfectly parallel feeders, hang thousands of light fixtures, teach our apprentices how to solve problems, coordinate shutdowns in healthcare facilities, and do so much more. Their attention to detail and pride in their work is widely recognized by our customers who highly praise their professional installations. Many times, it’s what our customers see as they walk through a completed job that makes them want to hire us again and again.
 
To everyone in the field who has made sacrifices to go above and beyond this summer: THANK YOU. Your hard work, your long hours, and the way you overcome challenges will not go unnoticed. You and your families are what make APG special, and YOU are the key to our success!