There is something troubling about the custom electronics industry. I hope to enlighten integrators, distributors and manufacturers on how the architectural world has functioned for decades — and how the design/build approach can be improved.
I work for a company called Techlinea in San Francisco. The owner started the company 20 years ago as a lighting and electrical design firm and has expanded it within the last 10 years to include all aspects of home automation.
We are purely a consulting and design company, and do not do any reselling or installing. The difference between many design firms and us is that we are also project managers.
We usually work directly for the homeowner or the architect, so we attend all necessary site meetings with the architect, builder and homeowner. We also attend several professional site meetings with the electrician, integrator, and the various contractors if necessary.
Points of Contention
Our services are not yet fully appreciated or understood. I believe that designers and consultants are extremely under-valued in this industry. We intend to produce the best possible design with the highest standards and accuracy. Since this is sometimes difficult for us, I have narrowed the issues that we struggle with to four points:
Retail price lists and literature: As a designer I am not locked into specific product lines so I can specify a variety of products that suit the exact needs of our clients. We do not provide clients with bids, but we do use D-Tools software to provide preliminary budgets for a job. We would like to put the retail pricing into the budget, but we are not allowed access to those prices by most distributors or manufacturers.
Lack of respect: Since I have worked for a few architectural and engineering firms, I know the normal procedure for many construction projects. The architect subcontracts his design out to the landscape architects, plumbers, electricians, roofing engineers, structural engineers and interior designers. Once the architect has all of the drawings he then includes them within his master set of bid plans and sends them out to various general contractors for them to bid on. The reason for this hierarchy is so the architect can track the progress of a job.
However, this typically isn't the process for integrators. They usually find their way in with the owner of the property or another contractor, and they end up doing their own thing without any input from the designer or architect. This results in a breakdown in communication that is detrimental to the project.
Integrators empower themselves: Many times we get hired by a homeowner, architect or designer, and since home integration is such a custom and “design oriented” field like lighting and interior decorating, we are asked to work directly with the client. Therefore, clients expect us to evolve their dreams into reality. As a result, we spend hours designing the system to ensure the client's vision comes to fruition. The problem we often face is that once the job is contracted with integrators, they will sometimes approach the homeowner and question or challenge the design concept or project scope.
These actions cause the client to lose confidence in the team as a whole, and it puts us in a position of justifying our design in order to re-establish our relationship and credibility with the client. The ideal scenario would be for the integrator to meet and review the system with us and raise any questions or concerns in a team setting so that the issues can be resolved and the project can proceed in a professional manner.
Installers don't listen: Architects and general contractors generally have a dim view of integrators. The reason is that integrators often do not follow drawings, specifications or established protocols for installation and making changes.
They make changes and don't communicate these changes to anyone other than the client and this puts the entire team at a disadvantage because changes usually affect other parts of the project — cabinetry, trim work, lighting design, interior design, budget and schedules.
As custom electronic consultants, we work hard to prevent these problems by conducting thorough walkthroughs at each stage of the project. We try to ensure that the systems are installed as designed. As a matter of course, we request that the integrator copies us with any changes and emails us so we can update the other members of the construction and design team.
The goal is a professional installation and, ultimately, to provide the homeowner with an accurate set of “as-builts” at the completion of a project, but we rarely get this information in a timely manner, if at all.
Taking Care of Business
My company is taking steps to educate architects, builders and designers because we feel they can be the driving force and be extremely helpful in adopting new electronic home technologies. Our goal is to educate the design and construction community so that we can develop procedures and modes of efficient and seamless communication.
So far, our initiative has received support from manufacturers such as Crestron, AMX, Vantage and Lutron, to name a few.
