Choosing an Electrical contractor

Hi, I'm a small electrical contractor (industrial) who would like to develop relationships with SIs as a way to grow my business.

I'm wondering if there are any integrators out there who have done this and would like to give their opinion on the experience. I'm curious to find out if this was effective/productive/beneficial to your business?

I'm not soliciting business, just opinions.

Pekan

I'm not sure how to begin the relationship but one sure way to maintain one is to for all of your terminations to be neat and have a wire tag on ALL wires.

Also, if it is not listed on the prints or specs, then ask the integrator what wire colors to use (provided he is the one responsible for making the call).

Quality is important for sure.

Thanks Dogleg.

I do it all (desaign, build panels, PLC software, commissioning, SCADA syatems) with sub-contractors doing the wiring, and sometimes building panels, for me. I even use SI type sub-contractors sometimes, but not often.

You will usually find that SIs will issue cable schedules for the sub-contractor to wire in and then do the terminatios of control cables themselves or direct the sub-contractors staff on how they are to be done.

You may be able to pick up some wiring work from SIs but I doubt that you will find one that would involve you in any other way than doing the 'hack' work.

I tend to disagree. If you are in an area that is devoid of any smart integrators or have a lot of contacts that require more technical work then an informal partnership with an SI is beneficial to both. If you can communicate to the SI what you want, they will design and build the unit or system, you install and pre-commission and the SI then turns up to do the final commissioning.
We do this with a lot of rmote area local electricians and it is beneficial to both parties.
Now finding a good, reliable SI who wont just use you to get your contacts or work is the hard bit.
Regards Alan Case

Our SI group has a good working relationship with an electrical contractor.

When either group gains a new customer, the other is suggested for the SI/electrical work.

It has worked well for both groups. Each group knows what to expect from the other and neither has to train the other any longer.

I end up on the customer side of the SI game from time to time, and the best advice I can give you to winning over an SI and building a relationship with them is to make sure you always follow their specifications.

If they say you must use Stranded THHN 16 AWG orange wire with red stripes for a circuit then don't even think about using anything else for that circuit. (even if you have a couple thousand feet of plain orange 14 AWG left over from another job).

If the schematics show each device having a separate 120VAC power line running from the terminal block to each device, then do not try to save material/money and pull a single wire and parallelling all the individual devices off of it with field terminations.

If they specify brand X devices and you think brand Y is better, suck it up and use Brand X.

A nice wire labeler is a must and every wire at every termination needs a number that corresponds to the schematics.

If there is a change that absolutely has to be made or the schematics simply can't be followed, then make sure the SI knows so their as-builts reflect it.

If you follow their engineers specifications just as they were laid out, then the SI will remember you fondly for it. Hopefully this translates to more business for you. The end customer will remember the SI (and your own business) fondly and also are much more likely to become repeat customers.

A lot of electrical contractors think of the installation being the end-game. Once they're done they walk away and never have to see the installation again. But the SI may have to support it for years to come. And the customer has to maintain that system until it is retired. A clean well done installation makes both of these tasks exponentially easier.

i agree with monkeyhead...

Let me add this: I like an electrician who will come forward and ask me questions if he believes something is not right. I have one electrician who works for me, and in nearly two years, he has never made a wiring mistake, plus he's found a couple of mistakes that I made.

Pekan said:

Hi, I'm a small electrical contractor (industrial) who would like to develop relationships with SIs as a way to grow my business.

I'm wondering if there are any integrators out there who have done this and would like to give their opinion on the experience. I'm curious to find out if this was effective/productive/beneficial to your business?

I'm not soliciting business, just opinions.

Pekan

Click to expand...

We have been doing this is one form or another for 20 years, hiring a local electrical guy and his crew for projects.

The most important thing , besides quality and proper certifications, is sticking to the quoted price.

When we are given a quote by a sub, we mark it up and pass onto the customer.

Many times we have had situations where we all show up at the job site to start a particular phase of the project, and the customer was not ready and we all had to walk away and come back at another date.

Some customers are good about this and will compensate you, but others will state that these types of situations should have been taken into considertaion in the original quote.

Bottom line if we get paid, they get paid.