07/20/2022
“Whatever good things we build, end up building us”
Jim Rohn – American Businessman, 1930-2009
In December of this year, just a few short months from now, CR Lighting & Electric, Inc. will celebrate our 20th year in business. As we approach this important milestone we find occasional brief moments to reflect upon this remarkable industry within which we make our living.
How fortunate are we, in this relatively small marketplace, to have so many wonderful partners to work with? From the General Contractors, Owners, Developers, Architects and Engineers, to the suppliers, manufacturers and their reps and our valued subcontractors; we have made lasting relationships built on trust, loyalty, performance and a shared interest in fair business practices. The bonus is we get to work with people we LIKE, too!
We’ve been involved in some remarkable projects in these 20 years, as well. Most of our children are tired of us pointing these out to them whenever we go places, but this simple act illustrates the pride we feel in our legacy, in our workmanship, in our co-workers, and in our culture. We often say that we have the best team in town, and we mean it. We demonstrate this unity most appreciably in our safety-record, which reflects the way our people look out for each other, and their families, by ensuring safety is on everyone’s mind.
We’ve seen some extraordinary growth in these years. We have fun telling stories of the first employees crawling in and out of the Rydman’s basement windows so they wouldn’t wake the baby upstairs (that baby is now one of our apprentices!!). We tease some of our PM’s about having an office on the back-porch (with the goats) at our first building on Gentile Street. When we moved here to King street five years ago, we knew we would outgrow this too; thankfully Chris had the foresight to buy the ground next to us. That’s right: we’ve expanded into a 2nd building now, which makes this a “campus”, I think?
We’ve learned some hard-fought lessons. Though we do not dwell on the difficulties, we try to find value in the struggle and we learn from every experience. Some years have been more challenging than others; Trevor didn’t have any gray hair prior to 2014, for instance. Through it all, the CR Lighting & Electric teams have prevailed time, after time, after time.
Before we start sounding philosophical, let’s point out how much FUN we’ve had while we’ve been at it! Never let it be said that we take ourselves too seriously. There’s a time to be serious and to dig deep, and a time to laugh and throw an elbow (or a go-kart) in Chuck’s ribs. We’ve got nick-names for each other that have stuck for years (most shouldn’t be repeated) and a few of us even have our own theme-song. The ping-pong table sees frequent and aggressive use. We’ve got a superintendent who runs the GC’s jobs for them because he plans better than anyone else, and another who was once asked to leave the job by the police (for simply knowing more about guns than they did!). We’ve got stories that border on Homeric in their retelling, from Shawn’s infamous email, to JP’s clearing of an entire hospital floor…. Oh so many stories. We’ve had golf-karts on their sides without any alcoholic assistance; you never know what might be retold around the lunch table on any given day.
Our ranks are filled with the best people we know. As we watch some of our co-workers rise to their potential, we can’t help but feel some pride as we recall where they started. “Super-Star” might be overused in today’s vocabulary, but not here; here it applies all over the place. The 212° ideal of “just a little more” is coursing through the arteries of this company, as it travels across the jobsites. Why would we ever want to work anywhere else?
I think it’s fair to say that as we’ve built this company, it has also built us.
And so, as our brief moment of reflection catches back up to the present, we are excited to look forward to what lies in front of us. There has never been a more exciting time to be part of the commercial construction industry here in the Greater Salt Lake City market. “Vibrant” hardly touches it. “Insanity” would be more appropriate.
How then, to mark this milestone? As we add signage to our new building, we embrace a new Logo as well. We'll begin transitioning to this new logo over the next several months. This “new look” embraces the future, yet remains true to where we’ve come from. We recognize that our industry (like our world) is changing, and we are prepared to continue to change with it. We’ll adjust and be flexible as we learn to fit our core-values, expressed so accurately in the mission statement penned by Chris & Emily Twenty Years ago, into our ever-changing circumstances;
“At CR Lighting & Electric, Inc. our promise is to provide you, our customer, with top quality services and products. We pride ourselves in being reliable and honest. We are committed to completing projects on time and within budget. We seek to exceed expectations and your satisfaction is our top priority.”