The Nation’s Oldest Electrical Firm Continues to Reinvent and Grow

 

Edward G. Sawyer Co. is the nation’s oldest continually operating electrical contracting firm.

 

“We started before the lightbulb was invented,” Principal Joseph J. McCluskey proudly says of the company. “We started maintaining the gas streetlights in the city of Boston, MA, in the 1860s, and Thomas Edison didn't invent the light bulb until 1879.”

 

E.G. Sawyer—which also happens to be the oldest active NECA Boston-member contractor—has come a long way from illuminating bygone gaslit Civil War-era walkways.

 

Headquartered in Weymouth, the company is a New England institution with a vast portfolio of projects across various sectors, from bioscience to healthcare to transportation. These include the ambitious, multi-year modernization of Logan International Airport; power and lighting installations for the 10-story Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge; and comprehensive shell and core electrical work on the University of Massachusetts Integrated Science Center, the first new facility in UMass Boston's 25-year campus master plan.

 

Currently, the company is working on the new Boston Children’s Hospital Pediatric Ambulatory Surgical Center in Needham. “We’ve got about 80 electricians on that job,” according to McCluskey.

 

A peerless legacy, name recognition, and a hard-earned reputation for excellence are invaluable assets for a company. Unfortunately, none of these things provide insulation from the highs and lows of the construction industry and the unpredictability of the marketplace, which makes the company’s most recent milestone particularly sweet.

 

Last month, E.G. Sawyer was named the 2024 TEGG Contractor of the Year. The award, presented at the 2025 Continuing Education Conference, recognizes the company’s outstanding performance, particularly its success in expanding its sales and service division to drive long-term growth.

 

The honor reflects the company’s long history of adapting to change, specifically the need to transition to a more sales-focused culture. Joe McCluskey explains, “Selling is not what a contractor is used to doing. It really isn't. And we struggled a little bit because we were a contractor trying to be a service company and they're not the same.”

 

Service Vice President Scott Jackson was brought on four years ago to lead the company's service division, and his arrival has proven to be a game-changer. Sawyer has seen the company’s maintenance base grow by 33 percent and overall revenue jump by 30 percent year-over-year.

 

“Scott came in and took our service division to the next level. We wouldn’t be Contractor of the Year without him,” McCluskey said.

 

Jackson spearheaded a cultural shift within the organization. “We had to rebuild the division from the ground up—starting with job descriptions and moving all the way to how we structured our sales approach,” he said. “The lack of structure had limited our growth. But now we have the bandwidth to expand, and last year was the biggest we’ve ever had.”

 

That growth is fueled in part by the company’s success in TEGG’s Diamond Award program, which recognizes individual sales achievements. “All four of our salespeople qualified, which is a testament to the work we’ve done in training and development,” McCluskey said.

Sawyer’s leadership sees the service division as a stabilizing force in an industry known for its cyclical nature. The company has carved out a niche in high-end, technical electrical work. The service division complements this expertise by offering testing, evaluation, and preventative maintenance, ensuring critical systems remain reliable.

 

McCluskey detailed the structured approach the company now takes with clients. “First, we identify a building or client. Our sales team makes calls and gets through the door. We then conduct a complete evaluation of their electrical system, using proprietary software to generate reports on system health. We provide recommendations, offer solutions, and most importantly, we deliver results.”

 

The success of this approach is clear—Sawyer boasts a renewal rate of over 96 percent on its service contracts, an impressive figure that underscores client satisfaction.

 

As the company looks to the future, its leaders remain committed to innovation and service excellence. “Contractors aren’t natural salespeople,” McCluskey admitted. “That’s why this transition wasn’t easy. But Scott brought a fresh perspective, and now we have a model that works. We’re growing every year, and we’re just getting started.”

 

With a legacy spanning more than a century and a half, Edward G. Sawyer, Co. has once again proven that longevity isn’t just about history—it’s about adaptation, strategy, and the right leadership to drive growth.