As proud employees of USIC, most of us have gotten to a point where large start-ups are second nature, or simply put, no big deal. However, I’d like to remind everyone, they are a massive undertaking. So why does it seem so easy? We just have people in our organization that work hard and know how to pull these things off. Utah is one of those large start-ups that is taking an army of hard working USIC employees to get it going. An added challenge is that Utah is new territory for USIC. That means we are starting from scratch. No office, no trucks, no equipment and no employees.
With an April 1st Utah start, we are well on our way to being operational. We secured an office in Salt Lake City where our new district manager, Jason Brooks, will manage the operations. He has already coined their battle cry “Go Utah!”. Jason has been with USIC for over 15 years. For most of that time, he has been the District Manager of Western Missouri. With 23 total years of experience in the locating industry, Jason is a great fit to lead this new operation. Jason will be moving to the Salt Lake City area with his wife of 20 years, Lynet, his 3 dogs and 1 cat.
We are currently busy building our Utah team of 100+ employees. Our Sourcing, Recruiting and HR departments are key in this initiative. They help us gather a mix of new hires, experienced hires from the Utah area and experienced hires from other USIC operations. Of course, having good technicians and supervisors is the most important piece of building a new district, but it is not the only piece. Getting 100+ trucks, laptops, phones, etc… is not done overnight. I am thankful we have our folks at corporate that spearhead these tasks. Then there is what I call the back-office stuff. It’s not easy, but once again I am grateful, we have some fantastic people taking care of these fine details like obtaining a business license, getting utilities hooked up, setting up billing, setting up our ticket management process, safety compliance, ensuring we have prints, etc…
The Utah district will join the growing Pacific West Region which includes Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana. We are all excited about our latest addition and look forward to continued growth in the West. As we draw closer to the April 1st Utah start, we will be asking all of you for some help “to get this party started”. We’ll need some USIC employees to come out for a few weeks to help complete tickets, train, interview and more. Yes, not the slowest time of year to bring folks in from other districts but a necessity none the less. It will be important for a smooth transition and to show our new customers in Utah why we are so good at Start-ups… and make it look easy. We will all know though, it took an army and a lot of work to pull it off. “Go Utah!”
Mike Marrero
Director Operations
Pacific West Region
