Mike Castellani bought a tired 1973 electrical company in 2016 with no trade background and one conviction: run a specialty sub on data, not instinct. His son Adam built the systems. Here is what that looks like in practice — and why their highest-profile finished jobs still lost money.
Most electrical contractors know within a few months whether a GC is going to be a problem. The late RFIs, the change-order arguments, the superintendent who calls three times a day and still can't tell you what the schedule is. Knowing it and being able to do anything about it are two different things.
Able Electric 2016 Limited, based in Nova Scotia, has spent the better part of a decade building the second thing. Mike Castellani — President, corporate-sales background, zero construction history before he bought the company — joined host Daniel Arsenault on the Atlantic Construction Podcast to walk through what it means to run a specialty electrical sub as a data-driven business. His son Adam, Operations Coordinator, joined to explain the systems he built. Neither codes. The system is not complicated. That is partly the point.
Foundation first, growth second
Mike's acquisition thesis was not about electrical. It was about applying process discipline to an industry that, in his read, ran mostly on relationships and feel. His frame from the start was patience. He borrowed a construction metaphor: "you can't swing for the fences, you want to build a roof on your host but if you don't have a good foundation" — and it collapses without one. Before Able chased bigger projects or added trucks, the priority was making the existing operation legible.
The result is a shop that runs on evidence. Mike puts it directly: the aim is "it's a process driven metrics based... we get away from the gut decisions and it's a factual math-based decision". That phrase sounds obvious until you work backwards through what it requires. You need data. Data requires tracking. Tracking requires someone to build the systems. That was Adam's job.
The labour shortage compounds the problem. Rather than defaulting to more headcount, Mike argues that "you don't need as many people if you do your business smart" — and that the primary path through a chronic pipeline gap is technology: "a lot of it is really coming down to embracing technology so that way we're able to manage more work" — more efficient before bigger.
The dashboard as the operating system
Adam came to construction without a trade background, which may be why he built the operations layer from scratch rather than inheriting assumptions about how subs run. The core is swim-lane mapping — every process drawn out, every handoff visible — combined with cycle-time measurement on the things that actually drive job health: shop drawing turnaround, change-order resolution, invoice aging.
In Adam's words: "we'll start tracking our cycle times... by tracking that it's kind of built into our process and then we can identify where our gaps are". The cycle times feed a dashboard. The dashboard gets reviewed in team process-improvement sessions. Gaps become agenda items, not firefighting exercises.
The goal, from a GC's perspective, is to be the sub nobody has to manage. Able's stated aim: "we want to minimize the bandwidth that it takes to actually manage us and deliver value to the customer". A project manager carries a cognitive load for every trade on site. The sub that empties that bucket — submittals in on time, RFIs answered, invoices correct — gets invited back. Being the lowest-management-intensity trade is a genuine competitive position, not just a nice-to-have.
Saying no to the wrong job
The dashboards do something else: they accumulate a performance history on every GC Able has worked with. That history becomes the filter.
As Mike explains, "we'll refer back to our metrics... we're not going to be successful in there... is it going to take too much bandwidth from us". If a particular GC plus project-type combination has historically burned margin and management attention, Able declines the invitation — regardless of the dollar value on the cover page. The bid never goes out.
This is not intuition dressed up in spreadsheets. It is the opposite: intuition suppressed by evidence. Mike describes the approach as chess, not checkers. The checkers move is chasing every opportunity because the number looks good. The chess move is recognizing that not every GC relationship carries the same cost, and some cost more than they pay.
The same calculus applies to material suppliers. Able will pay a slightly higher unit price to a supplier whose process is clean. The logic: "if it's less bandwidth for us to manage it's going to reach site smoother we're going to go use them". The total cost of a supply relationship includes the management overhead. That overhead never appears on the invoice.
Stakeholder awareness is a hidden cost driver in the same vein. As Mike frames it, "if they don't have an awareness of all the stakeholders involved in a job it's ultimately going to cost more". Knowing who gets impacted before the decision is made — and tracking it — is unglamorous work that pays in avoided rework.
The four pillars nothing can substitute for
All of the back-office discipline exists to support what actually has to happen: work done right on site. Mike's framework is four non-negotiables — "tools material skill set and scope... if we don't have those in place the jobs will go sideways". No cycle-time dashboard rescues a job where the wrong people showed up without the right gear to work on a scope they didn't fully understand.
Adam has pushed the tools pillar down to the apprentice level. The people closest to the work are often the first to spot a tool problem, so Able gives them a channel to surface solutions, not just flag problems.
Investing in quality tools also carries a retention dimension that never appears on a bid sheet. The observation is direct: "if they see we're using the best tools... some of our older guys say yeah thanks for doing that because they climb ladders all day long". A tradesperson who takes less physical punishment because the company bought the lighter drill stays in the trade longer. That matters acutely when the apprenticeship pipeline is thin — a consequence of decades of high-school guidance that, as Mike puts it, told students "University Universe University don't go to vocational school and we've heard that for years and years that is still like that".
Commission, omission, and the culture line
Building a process-driven shop requires a specific kind of office hire. The filter is coachability. When evaluating a young, inexperienced project manager, the question is not the resume — it is whether "is he coachable... can you provide him the tools to make him successful will you mentor him". That answer predicts more than any credential.
The culture benchmark Mike operates against is the distinction between acts of commission and acts of omission. Commission: a problem arose, someone tried something, it did not work — "acts of commission is I've had this problem I tried this and it didn't work I said at least you tried". That is a learning event. Omission: a problem existed, nobody moved. That is the culture killer.
Recognition runs alongside accountability. When Able posts a completed project publicly, the post names the field crew that built it: "that recognition needs to go down to the guys and the girls on site that have built that from the ground up". In a market where retention is a daily problem, publicly attributing work to the people who did it is not a small gesture.
When the brand-name job loses money
The most candid moment in the conversation is Mike's accounting of two visible completed jobs: the Under Armour Factory House fit-out at Dartmouth Crossing, and the Gahan House fit-out inside the Nova Centre in downtown Halifax. Both are referenceable, brand-associated projects. Both lost money. As Mike puts it: "no context on how the project went... in the back of your mind like yeah we lost money on both".
That admission is the whole thesis stated plainly. A project's visibility is not its value. The correct metric is margin and management bandwidth consumed. Able's retrospective data on those jobs now shapes which similar bids it pursues and at what price — which is exactly what the systems exist to do.
At the time of recording, Able was in the field on the Sobeys Inspiration Hub at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nine Locks Brewing's new flagship facility in Dartmouth with Lindsay Construction as GC, and hospital work. The Cape Breton office, opened in May 2021, extended the same operating model into a new market.
The businesses behind the build
Able Electric 2016 Limited handles full-service commercial and institutional electrical and communications work across Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada — new builds, fit-ups, renovations, data and communications infrastructure, service and maintenance, and solar and EV upgrades.
Lindsay Construction served as general contractor on the Nine Locks Brewing project at the time of recording. In continuous operation since 1959, they work across commercial, healthcare, multi-residential, industrial, and recreational sectors in Atlantic Canada, with particular depth in tilt-up concrete.
Payzant Building Products sponsored this episode. A family-owned, multi-generational building-materials retailer operating under the Home Hardware Building Centre banner, Payzant serves contractors and commercial clients across the Halifax region and Hants County.
Guests: Michael Castellani and Adam Castellani, Able Electric 2016 Limited. Episode 38 of the Atlantic Construction Podcast. Watch the full episode. Founding date and acquisition: ableelectric.ca/about.