Taft Electric Company

Taft Electric Company is a Ventura, Calif., electrical contractor that John Taft opened in 1946 a few blocks from today’s headquarters. W.E. ‘Bud’ Hartman bought and incorporated it in 1965, and it’s now 100% employee-owned, a union shop with NECA and the IBEW and branches from San Leandro to Chino. It does electrical construction, prefabrication, a UL 508A panel shop, VDC and service work for schools, hospitals, biotech plants, transportation and industrial clients. Taft Electric was the electrical subcontractor on the new Compton High School, the $232 million, 31-acre campus that Swinerton built for Compton Unified, including the 40,868-sq-ft Andre ‘Dr. Dre’ Young Performing Arts Center. ENR West named it the 2026 Best Project in K-12 education.

Start with the prefabrication shop, because it shapes how everything else Taft Electric does reaches the field. The company puts the Ventura facility at 40,000 square feet and says it has run a prefab shop for more than 22 years. The sequence begins in BIM: components are modelled, translated into fabrication drawings and spool sheets, assembled in the shop and delivered ready to install. The assembly list covers custom panels and boxes, UL-listed wiring assemblies, branch power and lighting assemblies, underground electrical assemblies, conduit rack and strut assemblies, wire harnesses and pre-pulls, and lighting and device kits, with QR-code tracking, component labelling and just-in-time delivery coordination around it.

The panel shop is a separate capability at the same Valentine Road address. It is UL 508A-listed and turns out water and wastewater control panels, SCADA interface and network panels, PLC and HMI integration panels, VFD and soft-starter panels, and custom enclosure layouts, each wired, documented and tested before it ships, with field support and startup services available afterward.

Instrumentation and controls is where those panels end up. That division handles industrial process control systems, process instrumentation installation and calibration, field instrument loop installation and testing, flow, pressure and level instrumentation, motor control centres and variable frequency drives, building automation and HVAC controls integration, and PLC and SCADA programming support, through startup, commissioning and operator training. Water and wastewater treatment, industrial process plants and mission-critical facilities are the environments named.

The low voltage division is broad enough to stand on its own: structured cabling and network infrastructure, wireless and distributed antenna systems, fire alarm design and installation, public address and mass notification, access control, intrusion detection, video surveillance, audio visual, and nurse call and patient communication systems for healthcare campuses.

On the front end, the design-assist programme is spelled out step by step, from early contractor involvement and constructability reviews through continuous cost estimating against a design-to-budget target, long-lead identification and early buy-out, one-line development, value engineering, MEP coordination, code review, phasing and sequencing, and target value design support, running from schematic design to complete construction documents.

Delivery leans on Lean. The company dates its Lean work to 2007 and its affiliation with the Lean Construction Institute to early 2008, and names pull planning, 5S, short interval scheduling and job-specific huddles as everyday tools. Safety is described as running top down with a stated goal of zero injuries, and the record includes NECA Safety Excellence recognition in 2024 and repeated NECA safety awards reaching back to 2009. The awards page carries roughly 45 NECA Electrical Excellence wins, the most recent four from 2026 covering the Santa Monica City Yards microgrid and three separate scopes at the Los Angeles Metro Airport Connector.

Eleven California offices carry the work, from Ventura and Newbury Park through Santa Maria, San Luis Obispo, Santa Clarita, LAX, Orange and Chino up to San Leandro and Brentwood. Licensing is posted site-wide as CA License #772245 with DIR registration #1000000149. Affiliations beyond the NECA and IBEW relationship include LIUNA, the Lean Construction Institute, NAWIC and the National Center for Employee Ownership. Client and partner logos include Amgen, Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health, LAUSD, Caltrans, LAX and UC Santa Barbara, alongside general contractors such as Hensel Phelps, Turner, McCarthy, Skanska and DPR.