About

In 1954, Walter Cochran and his sons, Bob and Gordon, opened an electrical contracting office in a Seattle storefront. They pulled wire and made service calls for small local businesses. Today, under the leadership of Walter’s granddaughter LeeAnn, Cochran is a major force in the electrical, technology, and shore power industries. With revenues exceeding $200M, we’re big enough to offer a broad range of services and capabilities, yet small enough to provide individualized service.

Over the last six decades, we’ve built relationships with most of the major general contractors, subcontractors, designers, and suppliers in the Seattle/King County and Portland metropolitan areas, collaborating on commercial, residential, industrial, and governmental buildings and facilities. We’ve worked successfully with permitting officials and regulatory agencies to initiate projects efficiently and keep them on track. In 1991, we acquired Broadway Electric, a respected Oregon-based service firm, to better serve the Portland metropolitan area, as well as central and eastern Oregon. It’s been a busy few decades, and we’re happy to share some of the highlights. → Timeline

Our Company’s values are described in the words:
• Embrace honesty.
• Care about each other and show it.
• Trust and empower people.
• Practice humility and appreciation.

For each of these, there are dozens of stories that illustrate these values.

We find these to be “working” values, which means they are durable enough to be used to support everyday decisions. Perhaps the greatest gift that these values bring to us are not the words themselves, but rather the hundreds of hours of discussions we engage in to extend them throughout our company.

Cochran’s safety program gives our workers tools for staying injury-free. It’s the cornerstone of our decades-long commitment to worksite safety. Cochran prepares a safety plan for every project, detailing the specific hazards of the site and recommending ways to minimize them. We provide specialized training for unique hazards such as confined spaces, heights, and respiratory exposure. We focus on accident prevention, combined with comprehensive safety policies and programs.

Cochran is committed to making our industry more environmentally responsible. We employ LEED-Accredited professionals and offer a full range of LEED building services. We’re always on the lookout for new sustainable technologies, and trying to make our best practices better. We provide life cycle cost analyses for our projects to assess environmental impacts and dollar value, and manage on-site recycling programs for scrap metal and other jobsite waste.