I've been almost purely residential since launching for the simple reason that I enjoy it. Lately, however, I've been getting a lot of requests to bid on commercial (i.e. retail and office LV/AV), so I am revisiting this.

I still want to be at least 50% res, but if I could build a profitable commercial side to the business without getting into a mess, that certainly sounds appealing.

It's not so much that I have specific concerns about commercial. Rather, it's that I don't know enough about commercial work to know what concerns I should have.

On the residential side, my bread and butter is audio, video, lighting, hvac and network. I'm not sure how to think about what my bread and butter might be on the commercial side?

What are the key difference between res and commercial? What mistakes would I be likely to make tackling commercial work with a residential background? Where will I run into trouble with codes/compliance (I'm in the NYC area?)

I'm not sure if I'm asking the right questions. Any thoughts on commercial vs. residential would be appreciated.

the issue is commercial can mean anything. A small mom and pop place that wants a couple of TVs so they can watch things when it is quiet will be very near a residential install. On the flip side setting up several conference rooms for a large corporation could mean that you need to deal a lot more with network, looking at cabling differently and unions. Working on a sports bar could mean needing videowall capabilities (split image over 3x3 TVs).

Controllers in most cases will need to be cheaper, easier and more robust and the presentations/bids a bit more polished and detailed.

In the commercial world your "bread & butter" is likely to be divided into several contractors or full-time staff. There will be the "Network Guy", The "HVAC Guy", the "Security Guy (who will probably handle Access Control and CCTV - and cause ongoing grief for the Network Guy)" and the "Lighting Guy" (who may or may not be the EC or the lighting control company or its authorized dealers).

This leaves you with the A/V portion which will include conference rooms, auditoriums, distributed audio and distributed video.

Be prepared to learn about 70 volt speakers, Dante (Audio over Cat) and other protocols - both proprietary and open-source, and how to set up microphones, speakers, cameras and displays for video conferencing. Also, for video, the usual sources may be VGA, DVI or Display Port. But you have to be ready for the day when an employee brings his laptop, goes up to the podium, plugs into the HDMI port on the dais, and starts playing protected content - it better work!

All of these system usually get tied into each other through BACnet or other communications protocols.

The usual players in the A/V portion are Crestron, Extron, AMX and others. Are you a dealer for any of those?

You may want to start small. Say, a strip mall with businesses like retail sales, exercise gyms, grocery stores etc. The really huge jobs will probably always be out of your reach as there are several big-name national players in the market already. You probably won't be doing a 40' video wall at JFK anytime soon.

Not knowing what type of insurance you have now, you’ll likely need higher insurance limits and policy types as well. You will also need to have addendums drawn up for each project listing the property as additional insured. This all takes extra money from your bottom line. Who’s going to manage all of that?

NYC? Haha best of luck, you'll be dealing with a lot of “different” personalities on site as well. Parking (or lack there of), limited hours for access, service elevator reservations...better be good at making friends with security, loading dock workers, and elevator attendants. Are you accustomed to working alongside unions? If not, you’re in for a treat.

Commercial electronics is almost totally different from residential. First, commercial is NEVER stereo, always monaural. Next, learn 70 volt wiring, why it exists, and its ins and outs.

Don't propose to use consumer audio equipment. Just don't.

Locate equipment that can be controlled remotely at low cost. That is, stuff with keypads. Stuff that's made for commercial use.

Wire for video. Wire the POS, so learn what brand is being used in each install you do, and DO THE LV WIRING! As you learn different POS brands, you get better at it.

Learn to think like a restaurateur as far as layout of equipment, and process and flow of people, food, dishes... You'll be asked back if you solve problems they didn't know they were about to create.

Be friendly. Be cooperative. Get a deposit. Work out payment terms in advance.

I assume you're referring to Point of Sale when you say POS and not something else with those initials!

Depending on the location and the union, he may not be allowed to do the LV wiring. Just the hookup, commissioning and programming.

If you’re taking on public works I think that’s where the union comes in. At least in CA, you don’t deal with unions on private jobs. I’d definitely get a few smaller private jobs under my belt before rushing into public works.

I am Control4, only. I've heard mixed things about using Control4 for commercial. I can see that Control4 may not be the right tool for commercial work, but I'm not certain exactly how it would come up short?

C4 sucks at commercial.
Start with a sports bar. How would you control 60+ TVs? A sr260? Lol
Even in a basic conference room it’s a pain, although more doable

C4 can be used in commercial if you are literally just turning 1 TV on and switching inputs.

As soon as you step out of the C4 sandbox, like dual displays, video conferencing, etc. C4 is the most clunkiest interface for control. Hell, I'd even use RTI over C4 for commercial.

Not only that, be prepared to write basically all your own drivers for just about every piece of commercial gear that are in these projects.

My experience with commercial is that they will squeeze you for every cent and often look for the lowest bid. unless you are "in" with the contractor or owner. many areas have a strong "good ole boy" network that is hard to penetrate for newbies. Payment terms can be hard to negotiate and hard to collect. cash-flow management is critical on larger jobs.

what kind of payment schedules are you guys getting?

I'd suggest finding a vendor that can assist with that section of the market place. I'd recommend fitting the tool to the job. My favorite supplier may be an alternative worth exploring...

The company i work for has done only a handful of commercial projects in 2 decades. The most recent one was a hotel. A 2 floor spa area. It took about 2 weeks. We started a 9PM and left at 6AM. It was the easiest project i have ever worked on. I would take 100 of these over 1 7 figure residential project.

At the end when we taught the hotel employees how to use the system they started a debate about whether or not to show a screensaver clock on the in-wall touchscreens in the massage rooms. One guy wanted it to see it while working. Another voted against it because then the client would be fixated on it. Then someone suggested a button that could turn the clock off or on based on which way the client was facing on the table and i finally said "you have to choose yes or no to the clock, you will never be able to work around every possible scenario where you client might see the clock." And they just said "okay no clock". That was it. No meetings no emails no expert witnesses. A resi customer would have turned that into a nightmare.

No you're not. The hallmark of "assuming" is that you don't bring it up for discussion. You're saying that you're assuming while instead telling a little joke.

Commercial clients can cause as much grief as resi, believe me.

At least with resi, you're typically only dealing with 2 owners of the property.

Commercial jobs, I have to deal with the architects, designers, the CTO/CEO/CFO/whateverO. Then those people typically let their underlings get free reign to make decisions. Way too many hands in the cookie jar. On-going circle of chaos at times.

Typically, by the time we start a project, a lot of it has changed based on my original SOW that was approved. We always end up scrambling for something that was never talked about and it needs to be completed in 2 days.