Procurement, Electrified

The procurement team at Power Design is zapping tradition to make a stronger overall organization, bringing maximum satisfaction to clients and internal customers

“Integrity is a showstopper. We stop the show if there’s no integrity.” That’s one hell of a directive from one of the largest, most lauded design-build, multi-trade electrical contractors in the country. It’s just one such mandate that’s kept Power Design, Inc. at peak performance in the AEC space since its founding in 1989.

For Joe Dydek, the company’s head of procurement and the speaker of that declaration, it means taking a seat at the leadership table and fostering a hand-and-glove relationship with the Power Design operations leadership team.

With a presence in 25 states, the Tampa-St. Pete premium specialty contractor is currently working on 300 projects from Seattle to Miami, most of which are multi-unit high-rise buildings. Their portfolio of 1,856 completed projects includes some of the most challenging in the sector, and their 0.68 EMR is a testament to the safety mandates that attract their top-tier clients.

Their long list of distinctions include rankings on the Associated Builders and Contractors Top Performer and Top Trade Contractor list and that of the Engineering News-Record and taking the 15th spot on the 2024 EC&M Top Contractor and Design Firm list.

Unsurprisingly, they are 20th on USA’s Top Workplaces List. “We’re owned by the same family that started the company. It’s a really fun family-type atmosphere in a very forward-thinking corporate culture,” he noted. “We have project teams all over the country, but we’re special in that we don’t have satellite offices,” he said. Their single campus is home to 1,000 staffers, and the base for their high-performance field operators.

Dydek and his 43-person team purchase all of the direct and indirect products used on their projects and get them to their field teams accurately and on schedule. They also manage the vehicle fleet.

Electrical contracting procurement for large national firms is a largely regional proposition, and typically, supply distributors don’t work across regions. When Dydek joined the firm in 2023, he reorganized the group, assigning regional leaders who could develop relationships with both the company’s operational leadership and their external suppliers in their region. “We needed to build up the understanding of how they work and trust, and that’s what we did,” he revealed.

To trim their unnecessarily crowded supplier ecosystem they shaved down the supply base, worked with their best existing partners, and created a more competitive atmosphere while also developing more long-term, trustworthy partnerships. They also refined their contract management process by picking and managing their suppliers, significantly reducing time spent on that focus area.

“We also created a new organization that’s more about short term planning and day-to-day purchasing. That takes a lot of the responsibility away from the field and operations team so that they can focus on completing projects on time,” he added.

In such a commodity-heavy business, selecting the right suppliers directly impacts performance in the field. “We choose the suppliers our people have to work with every single day,” he said. “A single decision could change the trajectory of a job. We don’t take that lightly.” As such, the procurement team communicates closely with their field teams during the decision-making process.

At Power Design, a 100% focus on internal customer satisfaction means great outcomes for the business. As Dydek put it, “We want to make sure that we have a good relationship with our internal customers, that we have good communication, and that we understand their wants and needs.”

Power Design doesn’t stand still on progress, which translates to a high rate of supplier inclusion. “We like to understand new products, new ways of doing things. We want our suppliers to bring new opportunities for us to do things better, such as offering more sustainable material that weighs less and improves our safety on the job sites.”

They’re early tech adopters, too. One investment is in Kojo, a procure-to-pay software designed for the construction industry. Kojo offers a single digital solution for electrical contractors to plan, purchase, track, receive, and pay for their materials. The data it generates help the Power Design procurement organization to better understand their purchasing flow and the performance of their supply base.

“We work very closely with their leadership to make sure that they’re developing their software to help the industry grow forward,” he said. “From a tech standpoint, we’re focused on growing that through our business, which allows for our field team to order material more cleanly than they had in the past.

“We want our internal and external customers to be completely satisfied. Not a little satisfied. Not mostly satisfied. Fully satisfied. We take that to heart, and we live it,” he stressed. “If there’s anything that we can improve, we will improve at the highest levels of the organization. That’s really what makes Power Design so special.”

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Power Design is a National Design Build Contractor, focused on innovative construction across multiple trades: electrical, mechanical, plumbing, and systems technologies. Since 1989, we’ve disrupted the industry by putting next-generation ideas to powerful, practical use because we care.

We design breakthrough solutions that push the limits of what’s possible by harnessing the collaborative power of our teams to elevate experiences and empower the communities where we live and work. In an industry that tends to look back, we’re building better by staying grounded in our values, dedicated to our unique culture, and supportive of work-life balance – making us built to last. By investing in our people and doing things differently, we’re designing what’s next.

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Corporate Office

11600 9th St N,

St. Petersburg, FL 33716

Phone Number: 727.210.0492

Homepage Link: https://www.powerdesigninc.us/

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