Charging into a Male-Dominated Industry

SOUTH ORANGE

Woman-owned MGM Properties lands electrical work while other firms languish

AN ELECTRICAL contracting Firm that doubles its revenues in a time of high statewide unemployment among union electricians is noteworthy. The fact that the company is woman-owned in an overwhelmingly male-dominated industry is striking.

Monica Merel, owner of South Orange-based MGM Properties Electrical Contractors, says her firm's revenues grew from about $400,000 in 2005 to around $1 million last year. She expects business to surge to $3 million in 2007.

Merel attributes this growth to being on the radar screens of general contractors that subcontract construction jobs. "The larger contractors who have been in the business a while know about us now. We have a history of success and completion so we're getting invited to participate," she says.

Merel, who became a certified electrician in 2004, joined the industry at a time when there was little chance of blending in. At one point in her apprenticeship she was "the only woman on a job with 600 men," she says. "It was very, very unusual."

Women currently make up about 5 percent of the 4,000 members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 164 in Paramus, the only chapter from which MGM draws its workers. There are six IBEW chapters in the state. The Local 164 assigns and trains electricians and workers who specialize in high-voltage lines and telecommunications systems in Bergen, Hudson and Essex counties.

"For a small concern, they [MGM Properties] are doing very well," says Thorn Mischigna, assistant business manager for Local 164. "They've kept steady employment, which we've noticed because there's been higher-than-usual unemployment for the last few years."

About 60 percent of MGM's revenues come from publicly funded projects, Merel says. The firm has six full-time employees who handle administrative, sales and other duties.

Merel's aspirations and achievements are rooted in her childhood. Her parents owned Applied Control, an electronics manufacturer based in Fairfield, where her father also worked as an electronics engineer. He designed and made equipment including speed controls for motors. "I grew up assembling [the company's products) and eventually did just about everything you can think of," she says.

Then there's her inner drive. After graduating in 1983 from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., Merel took various jobs at electrical contracting companies before deciding to get an electrician's license. But during her apprenticeship-a period usually lasting about five years-the scarcity of jobs made her switch gears.

She became involved in construction management, enrolled in the Executive M.B.A Program at Rutgers University, and in 2000 founded MGM. "I'm very proactive," she says. She resumed her electrician's training after earning her M.B A in 2001.

In March MGM plans to hire eight union electricians to install a 30-kilowatt solar-energy system on the roof of a new building in Lyndhurst that will house the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission Center for Environmental and Scientific Education. Fitting the Lyndhurst site with 165 solar panels and a sunlight-to-electricity converter will take about eight months, says Merel.

The assignment follows a number of jobs for MGM that are nearing completion including an electrical-equipment upgrade at the Newark student center, a building owned by the Newark public school system.

The 10,000-square-foot Lyndhurst building is the latest endeavor of the Meadowlands Commission, a state-funded body that safeguards the Bergen County marshlands through land-use planning while promoting it as a tourist attraction. Plans call for classrooms and laboratories for learning about the Meadowlands, and an observatory with a retractable dome to be used by students and the public. Completion is scheduled for August.

Benard Associates of Wayne, the general contractor that won the bid from the Meadowlands Commission, hired MGM for the Meadowlands job.

The job comes to MGM at a time when the demand for union electricians has been sluggish. The unemployment rate among such workers in New Jersey has averaged about 15 percent since 2003, according to the IBEW Local 164 in Paramus.

Two forces have caused the slowdown, says Mischigna: a lack of improvements to phone and Internet systems because of few new products and slowing construction. "Nobody has been building on spec," he says. "Most developers are waiting for tenants now and that slows the process." Mischigna says die only exception has been public school construction in Abbott Districts, which are mostly poor urban areas throughout the state that the New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled must receive more funding.

[Sidebar]

Merel, with co-owner Sandy Goodman, grew up assembling electronic products at her father's company.

[Sidebar]

During her apprenticeship, Merel once was the only woman on a job with 600 men.

[Author Affiliation]

Email to tgaudio@njbiz.com