Koontz Electric Company, Inc.

Koontz Electric started in 1958 as an electrical service and construction business founded by Keith and Nancy Koontz in Morrilton, Arkansas. It has since grown into a diversified heavy industrial electrical contractor employing more than 200 people, working for customers across Arkansas and nationally. The firm bills itself as the state’s only high-voltage contractor and specializes in high-voltage substations and switchyards alongside renewable energy work spanning hydro, wind and solar. Industrial process work is the other half of the business, including power distribution, controls and instrumentation for manufacturing plants. Koontz is carrying electrical scope on Green Bay Packaging’s Project PowerPack at the Arkansas Kraft Division mill in Morrilton, a boiler replacement program valued above $1 billion that runs about 1,200 contractors at peak.

Keith Koontz started the company on a $500 loan in 1958. His son Benny carried it into the next century, and Bryce Koontz, who joined the workforce in 1987 and holds master electrician and contractor licences in Arkansas, California and Alaska, remains a vice president.

Over the past decade the firm has completed more than 4,400 projects with aggregate contract value above $692.7 million, and states it has never failed to complete a project. It is licensed in eleven states: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Texas.

Safety is where the record is most specific. As of December 2025 the Arkansas Department of Labor had recognised nine consecutive years without a lost-time incident, covering more than 3.5 million work hours. The firm is an Accredited Quality Contractor through Associated Builders and Contractors and has appeared on ABC’s national Top Performers list. It also holds Final Level 2 Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification, which matters given the Department of Defense work in its portfolio.

Recent projects reach well beyond Arkansas: the Fort Peck Powerplant modernization in Montana for the US Army Corps of Engineers, including 15kV systems; modernization at Beaver Powerplant; LED lighting on the Hoan Bridge in Milwaukee; station-service switchgear replacement at OAHE Dam; and a one-megawatt landfill solar array in Conway. Clients named include the Corps of Engineers, Entergy, CPS Energy, 3M and Kimberly-Clark.

Leadership is long-tenured. President and chief executive Dean Hoover joined in 1990 after working as a design engineer at Garver. Executive vice president Jeff Ludwig came in 1988, having served as a senior lead power technician with the White House Communications Agency. Richard Dold, executive vice president and chief operating officer, started as an apprentice electrician in 1978.

The company runs both an apprenticeship and a pre-apprenticeship programme, and hosted more than 120 contract partners for Construction Safety Week at the University of Arkansas Community College at Morrilton.