LV: The Forgotten Trade

We had an intro/discovery call with a prospective low voltage client today. We do these calls all the time. Every call, just like every client, is completely different.

This one was different because the client had a plan; an LV spec document.

Wow. That’s rare indeed. The spec called for different colored Cat6 cables for different applications. WOW!

Exciting, isn’t it? Well, for us, it is. Very exciting. Tears of joy exciting.

Nobody thinks about LV during the floorplan drawing stage. Nobody. Well, at least that’s how it seems from the LV side of things. We’ve had two prospects this week whose move-in date is April 1, and they’ve just reached out to us, the LV company.

That means the main conference room probably won’t have enough speakers or mics, and they won’t be optimally placed. It means the building access control will cost more to install because the doors were purchased without the thought of wiring for access control. And, it means busting up a lot of sheetrock to install security cameras that weren’t identified prior to hanging the sheetrock.

LV is the forgotten trade.

MEP gets all the glory, all the plans, all the drawings, all the permits, all the up front budgets.

LV? Not so much. It’s most often an afterthought. But it shouldn’t be.

Low Voltage cabling controls:

* How you get in the building
* How you prevent people from getting in the building
* How you make sure the right people get into the IT room
* How you see people getting into the building
* Your WiFi and your guests’ WiFi
* All the LAN drops
* Sound masking
* Every huddle room, zoom room, teams room, and conference room’s TV, sound bar, speakers, camera, microphone and controller

If you worked in an office – anyone’s office – today, which of these technologies did you encounter?

I visited a partner’s office today for less than an hour, and encountered 4 of them.

Actually 5: the room’s ceiling still had the up/down projector screen that nobody ever uses anymore because projector screens have been replaced by 85″ TV monitors.

That’s why nobody plans for LV, the forgotten trade: when it works well, you don’t even notice it.