Business View Magazine | October 2020

45 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE OCTOBER 2020 CW & SONS INFRASTRUCTURE , INC . Maryland, as well. Ninety percent of our work is in D.C.; the other ten percent is in Maryland, and occasionally, we’ll go over into Virginia.” Welch reports that a majority of the company’s contracts come from Pepco (Potomac Electric Power Company), a division of Exelon, the nation’s leading energy provider with approximately 10 million customers. “Our niche is underground transmission work for Pepco,” he explains. “We fell into that category by doing work for established Pepco contractors in 2011- 12. I was working as a subcontractor, and in order to be able to bid directly to Pepco, you have to go through a step process. You first work as a subcontractor for other contractors who are CoCs (Contractors of Choice) for them, and then, once you get in front of them and they see your work ethic and your safety program, they ask you to bid as a CoC. And we were awarded that privilege in 2018.” “That’s a big deal,” Harbaugh notes, “because when you talk about the competition, Pepco limits that to contractors that are on their list; you’ve only got three or four other folks that you’re bidding against for projects. It’s not like a public bid, where there are 47 people out there. So, they understand the value of the contractors that they’ve selected, who are doing the work right and safely. That makes our competition a lot less and we all know each other and get along. As a matter of fact, a lot of times, if one of us doesn’t get a job, we’ve got those other contractors of choice working for us as a sub, or we work for them as a sub.” CW & Sons’ contracts from Pepco are substantial and should keep its workers busy for some time to come. “We recently were awarded a significant amount of work that we have to complete over the next three years or so,” says Harbaugh. “So, we’ve really boomed. The District of Columbia