The Louis Thompson family is now the proud owners of the amenity-laden St. Jude Dream Home in Dardenne Prairie, Mo., which was built with donated electrical services and materials by the Electrical Connection.  The Thompson family had the winning ticket among 14,000 tickets purchased in the home giveaway.  A total of $1.4 million in proceeds from ticket sales was raised for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.  Electrical Connection and NECA contractor Branson Electric and IBEW performed the electrical work.  The home has a value estimated at $600,000 and features three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a three-car garage, home gym, full bar, wine cellar, virtual office space, man cave/workshop and a dog wash station.  Learn what happened when the Thompson family heard they’d won on Fox 2 News.

Electrical Connection contractor, Kaemmerlein Electric, is part of a team led by Contegra Construction that is building a new headquarters and warehouse for Diode Dynamics in St. Charles, Mo.  The new 70,000-square-foot headquarters/manufacturing facility for the automotive LED lighting manufacturer will be completed this fall.  It will include a showroom, four drive-in engineering bays, an electronics manufacturing area, engineering laboratory, 30-foot clear height warehouse, and a two story office space. Learn more.

Another Electrical Connection contractor Guarantee Electrical offered insights in a St. Louis Construction News and Review article examining demands for advanced fire protection and access control systems.  Guarantees Director of Systems Mike Hoefler noted rapid changes in access systems in the healthcare sector including nurse call systems requiring modernizing IT cabling and fiber networks.  Hoefler noted that “the building access infrastructure all ties into the same backbone and IT network.” Learn more about the integration of systems including those supporting medical marijuana facilities.