The Principle Services team showed up to the Southeastern Electric Exchange this week with the same intent we carry into every engagement: listen, learn, and serve the people in the room.
As a leader, I've learned to ask myself before any industry event whether it will benefit our clients, our team, and whether I can help serve others who are sitting in the same seat I am. This week answered that question clearly.
What we heard confirmed what many of us already knew was coming.
The industry is growing at a pace we haven't seen before, and that growth is a genuinely good problem to have. But it's a two-sided coin. On one hand, it's an exciting challenge to solve. On the other, every conversation we had, client to client, partner to partner, kept circling back to the same question: where are we going to find the people to do this work?
That's not a small problem. For owners and developers managing transmission buildout, substation upgrades, and large-scale BESS programs, infrastructure doesn't get built right without the right people on the ground. Not just people who know the trade on paper, but people you can confidently send into the field knowing the work will be done well and that your clients can trust what's standing at the end of the day. The field is where quality is either protected or lost. No amount of planning covers for a gap there.
It was also one of the most grounding weeks I've had in recent memory. Sitting across from old friends who are great utility partners in states across the country, trying to help each other through the hard parts, that kind of community doesn't happen by accident. It's built over years of showing up, doing the work, and choosing people over transactions.
Our team left with a clear picture of what the industry needs. It also left us more settled in what we're already doing and more committed to doing it better.
Faithful service to our people comes before faithful service to our clients.
That's not a slogan. It's a conviction I carry whether I'm at a conference, grabbing lunch, sitting in the office, out in the field, or on my way home at the end of a long day. When the PS team is trained well, treated well, and given a clear path to grow, the work reflects it. Clients feel it. And we can keep our standards high on every project, at every voltage level, across every phase from foundation to commissioning.
What I've learned over the past year is that if I can retain the incredible talent we've been fortunate enough to find, lead them well, and train them cross-functionally, the rest has a way of falling into place. The work reflects the people behind it.
One of the ways we're responding to the talent challenge is through deliberate, gap-specific training. If a team member has strong above-grade substation knowledge but hasn't had exposure to dirt and concrete work, we invest in getting them there through classroom time, field shadowing, and hands-on development that rounds out their capability and makes them more valuable to our clients and to the teammates who depend on them. The goal isn't to fill headcount. It's to build a team that can carry the weight of what this industry is asking of us right now.
The opportunity in front of us is significant. We don't take it lightly, and we don't take the people who show up for this work every day lightly either.
We're not just building infrastructure. We're building something that lasts.
PS is where people drive power. That's not just where we stand. It's how we build, deliver, and follow through.
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