Edison O & M; Services, a power plant maintenance unit of Rosemead-based Edison International, is consolidating four facilities,two in Long Beach, one in San Dimas and one in Paramount,into new space in Fullerton.
The company, which provides operations, maintenance and engineering support to power plant operators, plans to move into its new 56,957-square-foot industrial space at 1321 South State College Blvd. by Nov. 1. The company signed a five-year lease valued at $2.1 million.
“It’s partly a cost-saving move and it will improve the communications within the company so now we have different decision-makers under the same roof,” said Edison O & M; marketing manager Jerry Barich.
Edison O & M; expects to start with 55 people in Fullerton in addition to 165 field employees. About a year from now the company said it expects to have 60 workers in Fullerton and 200 in the field. Edison O & M; has forecasted $75 million in revenue for this year.
Edison International set up Edison O & M; as a separate operating company out of concerns that it could lose power plant engineers in the wake of deregulation and the sell-off of some of its own power plants, Barich said.
When Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric sold their power plants to independent power producers, those companies on average relied on about two-thirds of the previous operating and maintenance staff, typically subcontracting out the rest.
“Edison was looking for ways to create a new business to retain the skills these people have,” Barich said.
Edison O & M; clients include Arlington, Va.-based AES Corp. and its natural gas fired plant in Huntington Beach.
“We also operate plants for large industrial users like Boeing,” Barich said. “A big part of our client base includes companies that own their own power generation facilities and find it’s more cost-effective to use our staff instead of building out their own in-house plant maintenance staff.”
Independent power producers such as AES and Houston-based Duke Energy North America typically operate with smaller workforces, relying on contractors to do operating maintenance work.
“That sort of thing is pretty common in other industries,” Barich said. “But it happened in the utilities sector a lot later because of deregulation.”
Oil companies years ago reduced their in-house staff for oil refineries, instead relying on subcontractors, he said.
“Many of the craftspeople in the utilities sector also have been retiring,” Barich said. “So there was a danger that the general base of knowledge of what power plant maintenance people do was being lost.”
Edison O & M; is one of several Edison International companies not regulated by the state Public Utilities Commission. Edison Mission Energy, a builder of power plants, also is based in OC in Irvine.
A large part of Edison O & M;’s contract work takes place in Southern California, “but a significant part of the work is out-of-state,” Barich said.
Keith Wilson of Colliers Seeley represented the landlord, DSA State College Business Park LLC, and Scott Smith of CB Richard Ellis represented Edison O & M.; n
