Pace Communication offers a variety of communications services.

What started as a company with 16 employees has grown into a company with two divisions and 300-plus employees. Pace Electric Co. Inc. was founded in 1974 by Waymon Pace and sold to Billy Thompkins soon after. During the next 20 years, Thompkins established another office in Columbia, S.C., in addition to its headquarters in Easley, S.C. In 1994, he was planning to retire, but it proved to be more difficult than he originally anticipated.

“Bill was downsizing in an effort to try to get out,” President and owner Don Brown explains. “He only had 16 employees, but was still downsizing because he didn’t know how else to get out of the company and retire. I approached him and bought the company, and have grown it since to 300-plus employees.

“The growth that came over the next few years is contributed to a lot of things: lots of hard work, long hours and hiring good people,” he adds. “The bottom line is that a company is only as good as its people.”

Brown closed Pace Electric’s Columbia office because he thought he could manage the business more efficiently out of Easley."We didn’t have the right people in place, and I just had a better handle on things without the Columbia office,” he explains. “From just our Easley office now, we do work in South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia and Virginia. Today, we’ve [also] grown from just an electrical contractor to having a full-blown communications division.”

Pace Electric is a building systems technology contractor, which provides electrical installation, security and fire alarm services. Pace Communication Group, a division of Pace Electric, was founded in 2003 when Brown realized there was a void in the audiovisual/communications market. “We kept having to sub out work, when finally, I just figured I’d get my own people to do the work,” Brown says.

Variety of Services
Pace Communication does “anything in the communications field,” including cabling infrastructure, CCTV alignment and calibration, audio testing and calibration, video testing and calibration and fiber optic fusion splicing.

Pace Communication has a full staff of communication engineers, and two RCDDs are on the staff, Brown says.

“We provide dependable, prompt, confident solutions via full service capability, highly trained and certified personnel and top-of-the-line equipment,” the company says. “Our broad range of abilities and resources far exceed what others offer.” Pace Electric and Pace Communication serve the industrial, commercial, retail, healthcare and institutional markets.

“We have a good staff when it comes to in-house work,” Brown adds. “We can design and complete any job, from electrical work to phone security or audiovisual, right down to maintenance work after we leave a job. We are the only company that can offer those full services, and that’s a big distinguishing factor – we are the only full-service place with everything under one roof. We give a turnkey project from start to finish.”

‘Good, Honest’ People
Brown says the company’s employees separate it from competitors. With the bad labor market, however, finding more quality people is a challenge. “It’s something we have to deal with, and it will only get worse,” Brown says. “We are trying to make our company a better place to work to draw a better class of people.

“We do schooling and keep everyone trained, and we’re constantly keeping people safety-oriented. All our superintendents and project managers have OSHA training and keep our employees up-to-date with safety orientations. We try to be a step above everybody else.”

Pace Electric has a good reputation and has been around for about 25 years, which helps when recruiting people. “Between our longevity and being open and honest and building relationships is how we got our reputation,” Brown says. “We’re not the largest electrical contractor, but to grow the company required good, honest relationships with clients and hiring good, honest working people. That’s the bottom line in all our work.”