Q&A with Scot Garner
Manager of Electrical & Controls

Q: Scot, give us an overview of the Electrical & Controls department at ITAC.

A: Our department has 24 engineers and designers, all with electrical & controls backgrounds. We provide a comprehensive range of solutions for our customers. For low-voltage electrical distribution—600 volts and below—we handle the engineering and design, specification of equipment, and sizing of wire and conduit.

On the equipment side, we handle the controls and automation. We make the machines work, the boxes go from one end of the plant to the other. We program the controllers and select the electrical components on the machinery. The products might be cookies or consumer goods. That’s the machine side.

On the process side, it’s more like making products such as cough syrup, as an example. Making a product where you have to pump raw materials, and then you have processes that act on temperature, pressure, flow and chemical reactions to get the final product out.

Q: Do you handle jobs just involving your department, or jobs requiring work with other departments at ITAC?

A: Both. We handle jobs that just involve the Electrical & Controls department alone. Yet we also have vast experience handling large multi-disciplined design jobs across many of ITAC’s divisions, most often working with our Mechanical department. We’ll tailor our services to the needs of the customer.

Q: Do you foresee growth in the multi-disciplined area?

A: Absolutely. ITAC is one of the largest multi-disciplined engineering with turnkey installation services contractors in all of Virginia. In central, southern and western Virginia, I believe we are the single-largest firm providing all of these services under one roof.

Q: What sets ITAC apart from the competition?

A: In one word: flexibility. We are unmatched at providing the same attention to detail for a small job as we do for a project worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Compared to our larger competitors, our professionals have the talent and qualifications in a specific discipline, yet most of our people possess a wider range of experience and capabilities.

 Unlike some of our smaller competitors, we have licensed professional engineers on staff. We can seal drawings that need to go to a county or other authority for permit. We can also handle larger projects with multi-discipline design and software development.

Q: How has the economy impacted ITAC?

 A: It’s certainly had an impact, but we’re fortunate that 90 percent of our business is repeat business. These are long-time customers we’ve established excellent relationships with. They aren’t looking for just the lowest price. They want the job done right. They keep coming back to us because our pricing is competitive and we consistently exceed their expectations.

Q: Sounds like you excel in delivering service and quality.

 A: Absolutely. If you look at our top 15 clients in terms of revenue for each of the past 10 years, you’ll see a lot of the same names year in and year out.

Q: You must really know how to keep customers happy.

 A: Customer satisfaction is everything at ITAC. A lot of our work takes place in a short period of time. You work for months developing, designing and testing to go into a two-week plant shut-down and installation. It’s intense, but rewarding.

Q: So you invest a lot in up-front planning?

A: Definitely. Preparation is the key to success. There are months and months of work that get distilled into a small timeframe in which we install everything and then prove that it all works. We’re very proud to say we succeed at this challenge consistently, which explains why the vast majority of our business is from repeat customers.

Q: Is part of that up-front planning stage also known as “scoping”?

 A: Yes, this is where we define the full scope of everything the job entails. What does the customer need? What are we going to do? How are we going to accomplish it? What will it take for us to complete the job to the customer’s complete satisfaction? That can be very time-consuming because sometimes people don’t know exactly what they want. So we’ll investigate options and give them a range of potential solutions.

Q: So you partner with customers in the scoping phase?

A: Yes, and because scoping is important, many customers will hire us just to scope a project. On the other hand, some customers know a job’s specifications in advance, and we negotiate a bid based on that information. We’re comfortable either way.

Q: What changes do you see on the horizon for ITAC and the industry?

 A: One big change is that we’ll be doing more work involving Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). Simply put, MES allows your supply chain and finished products facilities to communicate better. For example, if your warehouse in Charlotte is running low on inventory of a certain product, it will automatically place an order for more of the product from your manufacturing plant. This gets done with business software, computers and the Internet.

Q: Anything else you’d like to tell us about ITAC?

 A: Just that our work is extremely gratifying to everyone in our Electrical & Controls department in particular, and at ITAC in general. Nothing is more gratifying than seeing a system work the way it is intended to work for our customers.