Since Prime Electric’s (PRIME) acquisition of AMS Electric in 2016, this small Bay Area based electrical contractor has expanded from a small presence to a serious competitor across Northern California. Merging with PRIME created opportunities to build for some of the region’s major Fortune 500 companies, increasing their annual top/bottom line growth 5x since 2016, as well as adding the ability to offer full-service electrical construction thanks to the recent acquisition of Access Communications. This opportunity also allowed PRIME to add full design-build audio/visual capability to our ever-expanding list of services and is a powerful addition to our preexisting low voltage division. In addition, PRIME is now adding Renewable Energy Services to both regions, bringing Solar Photovoltaic and Stationary Battery Storage Systems which will allow PRIME to tackle any technology, electrical power, and lighting scope presented to us.
A key component to PRIME’s success in Northern California can be traced back to our in-house VCS, Prefabrication, and Engineering support staff. PRIME takes pride in our ability to hire the best in the industry. Our VCS and Engineering teams coordinates with our General Foreman and Director of Prefabrication to seamlessly integrate our modeling and prefabrication processes, creating early opportunity for prefab work, limiting production costs, and reducing on-site craft labor and waste. PRIME’s culture of continuous improvement is shown in our meticulous process and taking a critical look into how we can continue to improve performance.
PRIME gets involved early in the design phase where we can get aligned with the owner, architect and contractor, set a daring vision, and assist in creating beautiful spaces that inspires great work. We excel in life science buildings, ground up campuses, healthcare, data centers, and custom office spaces for the largest tech companies in the Bay Area.
A current example of PRIME’s success is our work on Kilroy Oyster Point (pictured above), one of the largest single biotech construction projects in the Bay Area. When finished, the property — 50 acres on South San Francisco’s waterfront — will include 2.5 million square-feet of office and R&D space distributed across multiple buildings. PRIME worked on Phase 1 of the five phased development with Hathaway Dinwiddie which consisted of three buildings in varying heights on top of a shared podium and a four-level parking structure totaling 1.1 million SF. The project is currently building out Phase 2 of the development with Hathaway Dinwiddie and Clark Pacific. In this phase, PRIME has been awarded the core and shell of the three buildings – two seven-story buildings and one eight-story building, as well as two amenity buildings that will contain cafés for a total of 828,544 SF, and a 10-level 665,055 SF standalone parking structure.
Due to the high demand for life science buildings, Kilroy has been able to lock-in clients before the core and shell is complete, which means the tenants will often request design changes to support their tenant improvement mid-construction. Changes in scope after the established building design is always challenging, but our team quickly shifts to determine the best way to incorporate the changes with as little impact on the project schedule and budget as possible. Our key to staying on top of the schedule is maintaining the same team on all our projects at Kilroy Oyster Point, getting them involved early in the construction process and allowing us to have ongoing, intimate knowledge of where the project has been and what lies ahead.
As PRIME continues our growth in the Bay Area, we look forward to providing a full spectrum of services to all our current and future clients while challenging ourselves to constantly improve our processes and continue to build up strong operational leadership. Our goal is not solely focused on increasing revenue but hiring great people that will allow us to build with transparency and accountability in mind.
