If the relationship between electricians and audio-video (AV) integrators were a Facebook status, it would be “It’s complicated.” One big reason is the burgeoning low-voltage market, which both are targeting — sometimes as partners, sometimes as competitors.
Lately, the competition is heating up in the form of proposed state-level changes to building codes. A Utah proposal, for example, would lower
Class 2 wiring voltage from 100V to 50V, a change that would prevent AV firms from installing distributed audio systems. And then there’s the trend toward LED lighting.
“The controversial technology is LED lighting,” says Chuck Wilson, executive director of the National Systems Contractors Association (NSCA), Cedar Rapids, Iowa, whose members specialize in low-voltage systems. “One of the concerns electricians have right now is lighting is going low voltage. They don’t know what to do about it. They don’t know what their move needs to be.”
Audio-video integrators often subcontract their low-voltage installation work to electricians, according to firms such as Power Design, which was ranked No. 15 in EC&M’s 2018 Top 50 Electrical Contractors list.
NSCA currently is spending a lot of time meeting with state electrical and licensure boards to determine where the high-voltage/low-voltage demarcation line now falls.
“A lot of our discussions are: ‘Do our low-voltage exemptions allow us to keep working on that type of product?’” Wilson says. “We’re busy as can be all over the U.S. making sure our members are properly informed and licensed to do the kind of work they’re doing when it involves Power-over-Ethernet and LED lighting.”
AV vendors could respond to regulatory changes by revamping their product lineups, as they’ve done abroad.
“In Europe, we have a limitation of the voltage we can work with, so we have 70V speakers specifically for that reason,” says Chuck Espinoza, senior staff instructor for AVIXA, an international trade association representing AV integrators and vendors. “If they lower that to 50V, then 25V speakers are going to start selling like hotcakes.”
Power Play
AV integrators like Power over Ethernet (PoE) because it provides more deployment flexibility with their traditional products while making it easier to expand into new applications. Take the example of surveillance cameras inside and outside an elementary school.
“Not one of those cameras requires a power outlet anymore,” Wilson says. “It’s all powered by the twisted pair that goes out there. I think what’s happening is that the electrician organizations have looked at this and are thinking: ‘When is it going to stop? Yesterday, it was 50V/50W. Today, it’s 50V/100W. What’s it going to be tomorrow?”
In September 2018, IEEE published 802.3bt, a 90W PoE standard.
When partnering with electrical contractors, AV firms look for ones that understand nuances such as electromagnetic interference with audio signals.
“802.3bt will be used for public safety by powering things like displays over the network and not using power,” says Chris Wilhelm, executive director of construction at Tech Electronics, whose markets include AV, IT, security, and telecom. “Meaning even if your power goes out, your emergency notification signage will still work. Another use will be when retrofitting a building. As an integrator, you will no longer need to hire an electrician to drop an outlet on a wall, and they will not have to pull a high-voltage permit.”
Call in the Specialists
Does 802.3bt give electricians another reason to worry that AV integrators are going to muscle in on even more of their business? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is more nuanced and
potentially less gloomy. For example, different customers have different needs. Some don’t want to deal with separate bids and contractors for AV/low voltage.
“We’re seeing more customers in our market moving away from the professional AV integrator [model] of bringing in a separate AV guy,” says David Schrembeck, whose DBS Communications specializes in low-voltage applications such as video surveillance and phone systems. “They’re looking to have that rolled into the low-voltage plan.”
In some cases, electrical contractors aren’t interested in low-voltage projects and refer that business to someone else, including AV firms.
“I’m seeing electrical contractors call us and say, ‘Do you want to give these people a call? We don’t know anything about this. We don’t want to deal with it,’” says Schrembeck, who originally got an electrical license so he could pull permits but wound up doing some electrical work, too.
It’s also common for AV firms to subcontract some of their work to electrical contractors.
Low-voltage technologies such as PoE, along with IoT applications like smart building management systems, are prompting some electrical contractors to add IT skills.
“A lot of AV is done at the time of remodel or during construction,” Wilhelm says. “Therefore, the electrician is already on-site running pipe or wire, which is why as an integrator we will use the electrician. We use an electrician to create the pathways [and] pull the wire from point to point. We handle the field connections and commissioning on the systems to ensure everything has been connected correctly.”
“In commercial applications, the electrician will typically subcontract to AV contractors,” says Lauren Permuy, Power Design vice president of business development.
In other cases, AV firms bring in another type of contractor. “I’ve seen a lot of AV companies, when they have to do a large pull for category cable, hiring companies that specialize in pulling network cable,” says AVIXA’s Espinoza.
The size of an AV firm — and the size of its market — are two factors that influence the type of company with which it works.
“In rural settings and smaller areas, you’ll see companies that do everything,” says the NSCA’s Wilson. “In the larger cities, you see more specialization — even specialized in just life/safety/security or in fire alarm and emergency communications or AV systems.”
This specialization is a by-product of technology trends.
“The technology is evolving so rapidly that a lot of our members have opted to not do their own infrastructure anymore,” Wilson says. “There are companies that are just wiring specialists. It’s a very different skill set and discipline than the ones that provide the system design and endpoint attachment to that infrastructure.”
Espinoza also sees a trend toward using specialists. “I think the AV cabling is going to go more toward the specialized side and not toward the general electrical side,” he says. “I think AV people would rather go for a low-voltage license. A lot of companies I worked for had a contractor’s license that allowed them to pull very generic low-voltage cabling like security and telecom. I think more companies would rather get the permits and licensing and either pull their own cable or hire a low-voltage specialist rather than send it off to the high-voltage community.”
Details Matter
Another factor is whether the AV company is comfortable relying on another firm’s work.
“In some places, there are companies that prefer to do the whole thing,” Wilson says. “They want to have control over every step of the project, so they have a cabling group to prewire buildings. We see it both ways.”
The first few months of 2019 saw what NSCA describes as “an unprecedented level of activity on licensure bills.” Many of these bills are the result of adjacent industries that use legislative influence, lobbying, and regulatory efforts to capture and control trade jurisdiction. Here are some highlights from these 70-plus pieces of state and federal legislation. For a continually updated list, visit www.nsca.org/track-legislation.
Sometimes AV firms are skeptical that electrical contractors understand their technologies’ unique requirements. Take the example of a microphone cable whose signal is a mere 0.22V. If it’s installed near 120V electrical cabling, there’s a chance that the mic signal will suffer from electromagnetic interference (EMI). Even line-level audio cable can cause problems.
“If you look at the differences in voltage just between mic level and line level (0.775V), that’s a 52 dB difference,” Espinoza says. “If I run those cables parallel, there’s a good chance of EMI jumping off my line level and onto my mic signal. Then I get garbage on my mic line.”
These kinds of problems can undermine a project’s profitability and schedule if the AV firm now must spend days tracking down the causes and fixing them. For instance, ferreting out the noise’s source might start with checking to see if cables were terminated incorrectly and then proceeding down the list of potential culprits until finally reaching proximity with other cabling.
Choosing the right specialist avoids those problems. “For the bigger pulls of low-voltage cabling, we’ll hire out to the specialists, especially category cable pullers that are certified — not just pin-to-pin check but certified for bandwidth and cross hop — to make sure everything is done by the book,” Espinoza says. “So when we hook up our equipment that says Cat. 6a must have so many dBs, and we plug into it, we’re going to get that.”
“If we’re hiring electricians to do that, the instructions have to be very specific and not just pull this as tight to the ceiling as possible, but why [you should do so]. When you start talking to electricians in their language about the differences in voltage and EMI, they start to get it.”
There are efforts to enable AV and electrical to collaborate effectively. For example, in 2015, AVIXA, the Consumer Electronics Association and the Custom Electronic Design and Installation Association’s R10 Residential Systems committee published ANSI Standard J-STD-710 Audio, Video and Control Architectural Drawing Symbols. “This is a milestone for the industry, since there has been a huge void in symbols representations for the low-voltage industry,” R10 Residential Systems Committee Chairman Walt Zerbe said at the time.
“Electricians and IT are our allied trades,” Espinoza says. “We cannot function without electrical — period. So, if we can get electricians and the IT industry to start looking at the standard symbols — and maybe even IT managers requiring that their documentation has those symbols on them — that would be great.”
Help Wanted
The increasing overlap between AV and electrical is like the AV-IT convergence trend that’s been playing out for the past few decades. As digital signage, surveillance cameras, and other AV devices began migrating off purpose-built infrastructure and onto IP networks, AV pros began getting IT certifications such as Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). These skills help them communicate effectively with their clients’ IT departments, which typically are responsible for AV systems, too. It also helped them avoid making red-flag requests, such as asking to put an unmanaged switch on the client’s LAN.
The latest line-blurrer is the Internet of Things (IoT), a broad, deep category of applications that includes intelligent lighting, occupancy sensors, and other systems aimed at improving a building’s energy efficiency.
“IoT has created opportunity in the low-voltage market,” says Power Design’s Permuy. “Building owners and managers are expecting more control, flexibility, and real-time analytics to improve effectiveness and efficiency. Buildings getting smarter requires increasing integration with IT. We are finding that our teams, once comprised of specialists, are now needing to be cross-trained with not only low-voltage expertise, but IT as well.”
Tech Electronics has a similar view.
“Electrical contractors need to catch up on IoT, IT services, and the control systems in a conference room today,”
Wilhelm says. “More and more conference rooms/auditoriums are implementing video walls and large displays. Electrical contractors need to understand how to design and install them. Also, with all the Wi-Fi that is running in a building today, the electrical contractor would need to understand the dynamics of what is currently living on the network and the bandwidth needed for the AV systems to live on the network.”
Some IoT devices use wireless, such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, or cellular. There are opportunities for electrical contractors, low-voltage specialists, and AV firms to install those networks.
“Increased public safety requirements have upped the demand for distributed antennae systems not only in new buildings, but retrofitting existing buildings,” Permuy says.
Mind the Gap
The electrical and AV industries are both struggling with a chronic talent shortage, which affects how they approach the low-voltage market.
“I feel the pain of the electrical community because I saw a report showing the average age of a journeyman electrician,” Wilson says. “Right now, the average NSCA member company has seven open positions. Our average size is only 40 employees. So, seven open positions at any given time is a real barrier to growth.”
Partnering is one way for both electrical contractors and AV integrators to keep growing. For example, working with an electrical contractor means an AV firm doesn’t have the expense and lost productivity of sending some employees to get electrical licenses. It also avoids the risk that employees who get licenses are poached by electrical contractors — as some IT firms do with AV pros who got certifications such as CCNA.
“The talent side is becoming a factor,” Wilson says. “If you can’t find people to put in a specialty kind of wiring, that’s a good opportunity to partner with someone where that’s all they do.”
Kridel is an independent analyst and freelance writer with experience in covering technology, telecommunications, and more. He can be reached at [email protected].
