Customer Story
Electrical
"With Flex, I could watch a video and create a form 10 minutes later. Log in and boom—I start building the form how I want it."
Client Profile
With a legacy of over 60 years of service and growth, UEC holdings is the parent company of United Electric–a leading industrial, commercial, and power distribution company in Kentucky and Ohio–as well as Best Mechanical. The company provides services to respected household names, such as Ford, LG&E, Lubrizol, Chevron, and General Electric.
As the largest industrial contracting and holding company in the Louisville, KY, area, United Electric builds, repairs, and provides 24/7 upkeep for industrial and commercial customers, as well as petroleum and chemical and electrical power distribution companies.
Challenge
The Need for a Scalable EHS Software Solution Across Companies
United Electric operates three companies in Louisville: an electrical contractor, a mechanical contractor, and a traffic control division. Each company has its own distinct requirements.
Thomas Harris served for three years as Safety Director. When he took on the role, EHS (Environmental Health and Safety) record keeping and report filing were sparse at best.
“Nothing in the safety department was electronic,” Harris said. He urged the company to progress into the “new age” with an EHS software suite.
“Our small company has grown a lot even in three years,” Harris said. “I knew we needed a solution that could help us keep up with the big boys.”
Solution
KPA’s Flex Software Delivers Superior Capabilities and Ease-of-Use
Following KPA’s 2023 acquisition of AnchoRock, United Electric transitioned to KPA’s Flex Software. They have been using Flex since early 2024.
“Transitioning was a no-brainer with all of Flex’s capabilities,” he said.
Key benefits of KPA Flex for Harris include:
- Ease of migration
- Improved record keeping
- Easier form creation
- Better training management
- Workflow capabilities
- Learning Management System (LMS) integration
- Keeping certificates in one place
- QR code feature for employee certifications
One significant improvement is how easy it is to create forms. “With Flex, I could watch a video and create a form 10 minutes later. Log in and boom—I start building the form how I want it,” Harris said.
“We also have vendors with forms specific to them,” Harris said. “We can use their form, keep it digitally, and send it to them once it’s completed. Our clients love that.”
Result
KPA’s Flex Software Eliminates the Guesswork; Delivers Convenience and Peace of Mind
In Harris’s new role as Corporate Trainer across all three companies, he plans to leverage KPA’s LMS more extensively, utilizing both pre-existing content and configuring his own.
When it comes to training, he appreciates several of Flex’s key benefits:
- Less time is spent chasing employees to recertify due to Flex’s credential expiration alerts
- Greater convenience for General Contractors to confirm United Electric’s employee training credentials via the scannable QR codes
- Across the companies, approximately 40 foremen are now using the Flex mobile app for training
“When someone’s on a job site waiting for materials, they can do some quick training; it’s all at their fingertips,” Thomas said. He also notes that while most of the group aren’t digital natives, they’ve taken quickly to the app.
“An elementary school kid could figure it out. It’s really that simple to use.”
Plus, the Flex mobile app performs flawlessly even when his foremen are working offline at a job site.
“I’m not concerned about anything with KPA. It holds the data until it syncs again,” he said.
United Electric has added a new Safety Director and assistant. Both are using the Flex Software’s Toolbox Talk content and training modules to create forms and keep up with certifications.
“If someone gets hurt, we need to know their training history, the last times they saw the Job Safety Analyses (JSAs), their last Toolbox talk. All of that’s in the LMS at our fingertips. It’s hard for a regulator to argue with a company when you have all your ducks in a row.”
The company also plans to leverage Flex Software’s equipment assets feature to improve the logging of inspections and other critical data.
