The Principle Services team showed up to the Southeastern Electric Exchange this week with the same mindset we bring to every event: listen, learn, and find ways to serve the people in the room.
Before any industry event, I ask myself a simple question: will this actually benefit our clients, our team, and the people sitting in the same seat I am? This week answered that clearly.
What we heard just confirmed what a lot of us already felt coming.
The industry is growing faster than we've seen in a long time, and honestly, that's a good problem to have. But it's a two-sided coin. On one hand, it's exciting. On the other, every single conversation we had, client to client, partner to partner, kept landing on 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, trusting the work will be done well and that what's standing at the end of the day is something clients can rely on. The field is where quality is either protected or lost. No amount of planning makes up for a gap there.
It was also one of the most grounding weeks I've had in a long time. Sitting across from old friends, utility partners we've worked alongside in states all over the country, trying to help each other through the hard parts of this industry, 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 clearer picture of what the industry needs. And honestly, we also left feeling more settled in what we're already doing, and more committed to doing it well.
Faithful service to our people comes before faithful service to our clients.
That's not a slogan we put on a wall. It's something I carry with me whether I'm at a conference, grabbing lunch, sitting in the office, out in the field, or driving home at the end of a long day. When our team is trained well, treated well, and given a real path to grow, it shows up in the work. Clients feel it. And it's what lets us keep our standards high on every project, at every voltage level, from foundation to commissioning.
Here's what I've learned over the past year: if I can hold on to the incredible talent we've been lucky enough to find, lead them well, and train them across different skill sets, everything else has a way of falling into place. The work always reflects the people behind it.
One way we're tackling the talent challenge is through targeted, gap-specific training. If someone on our team has strong above-grade substation knowledge but hasn't spent much time on dirt and concrete work, we invest in getting them there, through classroom time, field shadowing, and hands-on development that rounds them out. The goal was never just to fill headcount. It's to build a team that can actually carry what this industry is asking of us right now.
Kurt Lockhart, one of our team leads, had a conversation at the event that stuck with him. Some utilities aren't just struggling to find entry level talent anymore, they're having to outsource three times the amount of work to vendors just to keep up.
That's a real shift in how some utilities are having to operate, and in the kind of partnerships they now need to make it work.
The opportunity in front of us is significant, and we don't take it lightly. 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.
Principle Services 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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