AHL Kickoff Meetings That Save Projects

We tackle the real-world problems that slow down low voltage projects: messy handoffs, unclear ownership, and customers whose expectations do not match the contract. We share practical systems for kickoff meetings, estimating, data center career moves, and the growing need for networking and security awareness as everything rides on the network. 
• setting a sales to operations handoff standard with a kickoff meeting agenda 
• defining the documents sales must deliver to run a project cleanly 
• aligning customer expectations with schedule and contract language early 
• building estimating skills through blueprint reading, takeoffs, and labor units 
• using labor units based on average productivity and tracking them on jobs 
• finding data center jobs and understanding faster pace and higher quality demands 
• preparing for fiber-heavy work and learning high-count fiber basics 
• deciding how much Layer 2 knowledge helps for PoE, scripts, and device turn-up 
• explaining Wi Fi 7 performance limits without overwhelming the customer 
• developing lead techs with standards, mentorship, and troubleshooting habits 
• pushing customers to name one network decision owner across multiple systems 
• clarifying physical security vs logical security responsibilities in the field 
DM me, let me know, “Hey Chuck, I’m interested in that estimating class,” and I will reinstitute it and put it out there for people 
If anybody knows Mike Rowe, please put him in touch with me so I can get him on the show

Transcript

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After Hours Kickoff And Updates

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Wednesday night six PM Eastern Standard Time. That can only mean one thing. Live after hours with your favorite RCDD. I am back like a bad dream. Yes, indeed. Um got the LinkedIn thing figured out. Finally can post LinkedIn again. Starting to see people seeing my posts. Yeah, for those of you who weren't around, I would I gotten banned on LinkedIn. Yeah, believe that or not, uh, all the positive content I put out there and they banned me. But, you know, there you go. They're LinkedIn. They're LinkedIn. So we always start off every after hours. K-Man's in the house. K-Man, everybody say, get well soon, K-Man, because he just had surgery on his leg. Um, what are you drinking tonight? Chuck is drinking uh ginger ale Zevia and water and ice. Please in the chat box. What are you drinking? Just so we kind of know what everybody's working on here. South Dakota, you're probably still working, aren't you? Probably still working. Yeah. Um, acronym challenge. The acronym challenge for tonight is G I S. G-I-S. Kaylin's drinking water. What is that? What does that acronym mean? Come on, peeps. We got this. G I S. Oh, I should probably open up the thing so I can see the chat because that's what happened to me last week. I forgot to open up the chats and uh I missed a whole bunch of people trying to send me messages. So there you go. Alrighty, GIS. Graphic information, geographic information system. There we go. A knocking up challenges happening, so just an

Upcoming Episodes And Texgiving Plans

SPEAKER_00 2:10

acronym views. Already did it. Come on, AI, catch up with me. Um lots of things going on with the podcast. I got an interesting show coming up soon, already recorded with an engineer talking about counterfeit cabling. I got a show talking about how to keep and grow people and build a network within your company with Shelley Olmsted, Heather Randolph from Newcomb and Boyd coming on, talking about how to build a successful, a successful mentorship program within your company. And then tonight, tonight I'm actually recording an episode after I finish this with Mike Panaki. Mike Panaki, tell me in the chat box if you know who Mike Pinocchio is. If you've taken the fluke certification course, then you know who Mike Pinocchio is. He's the person who teaches that course, right? So he's coming on the show tonight, and we're gonna be going through um test results and what they mean, how to fix them. I'm really looking forward to this show tonight because Mike's a Mike is a he's he's a talented speaker and trainer, and we're gonna get a lot out of that, I think. Um also Texgiving. Textgiving is uh in Philadelphia this year. They're putting out some cable infrastructure uh for, I think it's Ronald McDonald House, I think, October 23rd to the 25th. Yours truly will be there on Saturday, October 24th. So if you're going to the Texgiving event, I will be there. And uh hoping I'll be filming, taking pictures, and doing some cable stuff, obviously. Let's get right into the show.

Fixing Sales To Ops Handoffs

SPEAKER_00 3:48

This question is from last week. It was submitted. I didn't see it till after I closed down everything. It comes from uh MOF4104. I think that's 104. Or is that Q4? Nope, it's 104. And then I love this question, by the way. Any advice for a project manager with poor sales to service hands off? Alrighty. So what they're talking about there is companies sometimes will dedicate a staff just to run projects, a staff, a different staff to estimate projects, and a different staff to actually install. Okay. Um in your smaller companies, a lot of times the project manager estimates the project and runs the project. In that scenario, if you're having a hard time communicating with sales, I think the problem's with you. But I think here what they're talking about is those larger companies where they've got an estimating department or sales department, won the project, and they're handing it over to the project manager, to the operations department, right? So the first thing is you know, it's funny, we work in the communications industry, but we suck at communicating. We just do. We just do. So, you know, long term, long term, talk to your senior level management and get them on board with having kickoff meetings. Okay, get them on board with having kickoff meetings. Yes, it means you're gonna be in more meetings, but it's going to help make your projects run faster, quicker, smoother. Right. And then what you can do before then, you can actually start modeling this behavior before you get that buy-off. And what you do is you you you come up with, you define with what sales must give you during the handoff to make you be successful. What sales must have in order to make you be successful, right? I I would say you would need things like the request for proposal, the the estimate, the scope of work that was written by the estimator, the latest prints, the latest project schedule, the uh any values you need to do your project management stuff for your for your earned value analysis and stuff like that. Have that. I would clearly communicate that with the sales team before you have the meeting. And I'll give them a week. Say, look, hey, we're gonna have this meeting, talk about this new project. I'm setting you a meeting schedule. Here's the agenda, and put in the agenda the things they're gonna need to bring. They're gonna fight it at first, they are absolutely gonna fight it, but keep up the battle. What'll happen is once they realize that the better informed you are, the better you can do your job, and the happier the customer's going to be, and then that's gonna make the customer want to come back and buy more, and that's gonna make the sales department more happy. Now, the kickoff meeting shouldn't be just between you and sales. That kickoff meeting should also be between you and your techs, right? See there, Caitlin. You and your techs, and you should also schedule one with the customer. The customer. And in that customer meeting, you need to review the schedule, the expectations, what was promised, what's in the contract, because what happens quite often is the person you're meeting with at this customer is not the they they submitted to their team, hey, we need this, and that went to somebody in procurement, and then it got polished and changed, so they may not have seen the final product. So sit down with the customer right out of the gate and say, what are your expectations? Here are my expectations, and here's what's actually in the contract. Because there are going to be some expectations that are not in the contract, right? So what you need to do is you really need to create accountability, create that accountability without turning the person on the other side of that meeting table into the enemy. Remember, you're all on the same team, whether it's the salespeople or the uh customer. And if you can, I highly suggest, highly suggest to bring the lead tech or the project foreman in on that meeting. That way they hear it firsthand. And they even say if you have me to do a do a do a meeting, right? So there you go. All right,

Learning Low Voltage Estimating

SPEAKER_00 8:10

next question. This comes from White Noise Sleep Doctor. And he asked me this question right at the tail end of the meeting, which I think is a great question, by the way. Do you have any courses or series for learning about estimating? Ed, the old tech guys in the house. Um, so here's the thing. If you go looking for classes on estimating low voltage, low voltage estimating, you're not going to find a lot. In fact, you know, I've do I do have a class, a two or three hour class that I developed a long time ago on how to do estimating. If you think I should make that class public and you want to join it, say something to me in the in the messages. Or no, better yet, DM me. DM me, let me know. Hey Chuck, I'm interested in that estimating class that you said, and I will reinstitute it and put it out there for people. I really will. So in the meantime, right? What in the meantime, what you really need to do is if you haven't done this already, start looking at blueprints, learn how to read them, learn how to uh um do takeoffs, know how, you know, here you go. Know what this tool is, okay? Know what this tool is and how to use it, right? What's an engineering ruler? How do you use it? How do you figure out if a drawing is scale or not? And if it is scale, how do you get the measurements off it without actually you know walking the job site? Start learning labor units, right? There's a labor unit to pull cable, a labor unit to drop cable, a labor unit to terminate cable, a labor unit to test cable, a labor unit to put in the jail hooks, a labor unit to install the racks. What are those labor units? How much time is associated with those labor units? Remember, when you're talking about labor units, it has to be not what you can do that task, what time you can do that task in, but what the average person can do that in. Okay? Because if you estimate everything on how long it takes you to do something, you're gonna lose money because not everybody works at the same speed as you. So labor units, learn what they are, learn how to put them in a bid, learn how to track them. That's key. Learn how to track them. And also, a lot of times labor units, you know, they're they're usually done in decimals, and that usually throws people off. For example, if something takes five minutes, five minutes to do, let's say it's uh terminating a jack, and that's not really how long it takes to terminate jack. But let's say it takes you five minutes to terminate a jack, and you got 100 jacks. 100 jacks at five minutes. You take five minutes and you multiply by 0.083. 0.083. Somebody do that in the calculator and put it in the in the in the messages. What's 100 times 0.083? Um, so I think it's what, 8.3 hours, right? So that tells you exactly how many hours. See, labor units, you know, you don't because if you multiply by minutes, 100 units times 50 minutes, then you get the number minutes, and you gotta divide that back by 60 finding the hours. If you do it by the labor unit, it gives you to you already broken down, right? And then learn how to um and maybe even practice doing building estimates from completed real-world projects. So if you've got a set of prints from a previous project, pretend like it's a brand new project and try estimating it. And then then when you get done estimating it, go back. If you have access to this, go back and look at the actual time it took to do that job. And how close were you? How close were you? But you also asked about resources. Excuse me. So there's there's a couple resources that I do want to point out. Okay, the first one is the American Society for Professional Estimators. Okay, that's probably the probably the most re most the best resource that you can look at. Um they do have an estimating academy that offers online, and you also get a certificate in construction estimating, but again, it's construction estimating, not cable estimating. That's where you run into the problem. Bixie has a couple design courses, uh, a couple project management courses, which includes budgeting, project scope, scheduling, and resource management, stuff you need to do. Um, they they a while, a long time ago, they used to have an estimating class. I don't know if they still have it anymore. I don't think they do, but uh NECA, the uh the National Electrical Contractors Association, um, they do they have stuff out there as well, too. They got some good resource, but it's electrical estimating. Now, the good thing is it's electrical estimating, so it's similar to low voltage estimating. And when I say similar, I'm saying it's like a it's like a an El Camino versus a pickup truck. Okay. You they both have a bed, they both can haul things, but they're not quite the same thing, right? But they're close. You you if you can get class in that, you can easily maybe learn some of that to go across that. Uh AZVA, uh the A V people, I think it's a Ziva's A V-I-X Avixa. I can never remember how to say that because I'm not an A V guy, right? They do have some stuff on project management, which gets into this financial concept, and estimating is one of those concepts, but again, that's A V. So if you're estimating A V, then okay, that might be good, right? Um, but here's the thing I do. Don't wait to find a course that says low voltage estimate, unless it's one of mine, because mine will save that. Mine will say how to estimate low voltage projects. In fact, again, if I get enough people saying they want to do it, I will fire that course up and I'll put it out there for people. It's the last time I taught it, I want to say it was about three hours, and we went through the different types of bids. We went through what what it's an RFP, RFQ, RFI, SOW, BOM. We actually had a set of print, um, you did rake offs on it, you did an estimate, you put it in an estimating sheet that I developed just for the training purposes, and then we had a critique. Much like how when I used to be an estimator, when I got done estimating, I had to submit it to my boss and he had to look at it and critique it. It's the same kind of thing. I will, you in this in this estimating class, you'll submit it to me, and then I'll critique it, and then we'll move on from there. But I got to get enough people to say, hey, I'm interested in that, to do that.

Breaking Into Data Center Work

SPEAKER_00 14:29

Next one comes from Tyler on TikTok. And Tyler says, I've been doing structural cabling for about three years, and I keep hearing that data center work can be a good next move. Where do you actually find those jobs? What experience gets your foot in the door? And what are the real benefits compared to regular commercial low voltage work? Okay, let's take those one at a time. Um, data center work. And I just did a two-part series on data centers, and Ed the Oltech guy, who's in the house right now, was one of the guests, and we talked about that. We did on the tail end of the second show, we got into things you should really do to get into data center work. Right now, it seems like there's a lot of data center construction in Texas and a lot of data construction in northern Virginia right now. So, but I hear you, but Chuck, I don't live in those areas. A lot of people will tell you, uh, in fact, I've I saw this advertisement today, um, it was for an electrical company doing work in data centers in Austin, and they were they they said, hey, we'll train you, we'll pay you. They'll even pay, listen to this, $120 a day per diem. Holy smokes, $120 a day per diem. Yes. Hey, love, I'm going to be, I'm going to Texas, do a data center. I'll be back. She's not listening. She just said, okay. There you go. Um, yeah, so but you got to look for them. Yeah, any of this, any of the uh engine platforms for for work, like Indeed and all that stuff, they're all over there. Um heck go to ChatGPT, say, hey, I'm looking for jobs for low volume data centers. Scan the internet and uh tell me where this all is. Oh, hey Ed, I forgot to tell you, I'm in Chicago next week. I'm in Chicago next week. Yes. Uh let's coordinate together and try to meet up. Have uh get Jay Hoo and let's go find us a good Mexican restaurant this time. Not the one you took me to last time. There you go. Um, where were we? So we were talking about uh data center work, right? Uh uh short notice, let's get together. Uh yes. It's not short notice. I told you like two months ago I was coming to Chicago. I just didn't know the dates. So, but the dates finalized though. There you go. Um, so we were talking about data center work, and he asked about so go find indeed and all this stuff. LinkedIn, LinkedIn, get on there, look for data center work. You will you will find it. Okay. You will find it, absolutely. And how does it compare to regular commercial low voltage work? Okay, so that's actually a great question. And I'm tinkering with the idea of doing a show with some project foreman or supervisors who run crews at data centers. And I'm thinking about bringing them on to talk about this kind of stuff. Um, I reached out to one of them today, he was in a he was in a leadership meeting, so I couldn't, we couldn't talk. I'm in fact, I'm gonna try to call him between this show and the recording I'm doing here tonight and talk about this because they're not quite the same environment. Now, yes, you know, it's gonna be new construction, yes, you're gonna have the HVAC, you're gonna have the flooring people there and the electrical and fire alarm and sprangler, you're working around other trades. That's similar, but in my opinion, enough to ask these professionals that, because it's been a while since I worked in a data center, data centers move faster. And they they want higher level quality work. If you're the type of person who thinks, well, I don't I don't cable dress because that's a waste of time, data centers are not for you. They are absolutely not for you. Because not only do they want work done quickly, fastly, efficiently, they also want it done pretty because that's their data center. Right? So, you know, you need to look for data center jobs. Um, the cable skills that you're doing from pulling for commercial jobs, they absolutely will chance for over. Um, probably more fiber skills than copper skills. Uh the right now, the the general rule of thumb for the people I've talked to, you know, 80 to 85 percent is gonna be fiber, you know, 15 to 20 percent will be copper. So don't go in there thinking you're just gonna be pulling Cat 6A cable. They're doing fiber. And not only are they doing fiber, they're doing high count fiber, like 6912s, right? The the big boys. So you better learn how those are laid out. And there's a lot of a lot of great resources out there for you to go look that up. Go to the FOA, they've got they've got all kinds of documentation on how to do that kind of stuff. The pay is gonna be better for data centers because you know there's a there's a they they are they're there's a rush. There's the goal, as I think Ed called it, it was the gold rush of data centers. I think he called it that. And uh, but you got to get past that, you've got to get in the door. And and the good news is there's such a shortage on data center people, and I get this from talking to people who do data centers, they will hire almost anybody as long as they've got a pulse. Right? I can teach you how to pull, terminate, test, I can teach you how to velcro, but you've got to be willing to show up every day. You gotta be willing to put your phone down, to be willing to pay attention to safety. Safety is a huge one in data centers.

How Much Networking Techs Need

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Next question. This comes from Chris on the old Instagram. He says, I'm seeing projects where lighting and access control, cameras, wireless, and building automation all want to live on the network. Exactly. That's that's a true statement. For technicians coming up today, how much networking knowledge, oh, networking knowledge, do we really need to know beyond installing the cabling? Okay, so Ed's probably got some good responses with that. So if he types them, I'll read them. Um from the cabling side, you there's always room for the wire monkeys for us to pull, terminate, test the cable, and do it correctly. Um, there are some people that kind of have one foot in layer one and one foot in layer two, right? So they're kind of doing a little bit of both, you know, cabling and putting in switches, GPUs, and and and setting them up. That's that's above and beyond my pay grade. I'm I'm a I am a knuckle dragging cable guy. I'll tell you that right out of the gate. But if you if if that's your goal, right? If that's your goal, then take some classes on earn learning, right? Take some classes on learning computer stuff. That's that's gonna help you there. Ed says his buddy has an A-card electrician and he moved to data center work and got a 60% raise. Did you hear that? 60% raise by going to data centers. That is something cool there. Uh, he also says the more networking knowledge, the better, because you may get asked to load scripts, and it's good to know that. So if you know how to read them, oh there you go. So so yeah, so what let me ask you this, Ed. Would a C CNA help them with that? Do they even offer the C CNA still? I don't know. I haven't checked that in a while. But yeah, it's definitely gonna help you, especially if you start talking about Ed says yes, uh, they stewed a law for that. Poe, power over Ethernet, right? So yeah, you gotta go in, you gotta you gotta assign the amount of voltage or or to go into each port and how to manage that kind of stuff. That requires you to be able to do that. What I'm saying is don't be the typical wire monkey. You know what I'm talking about, the guy who hates computers. In fact, you'll know them because they type in the computers with the two fingers like that. Okay? Um I get it, you're doing cabling because you don't like to do computers. But if you can do if you can do just an entry level type of computer stuff to do scripts like Ed was talking about, then uh you're gonna be worth more money. You will be worth more money. Uh WireMonkey says knowing how to turn up firewalls, access points, camera systems is a plus as well. Oh God, that that sounds like a great, great show. I need some people who know how to do that stuff to come on the show, talk to me about it, because that's not one of my main areas. Uh Mike Rowe has hundreds of low voltage data center jobs on their boards. I just looked. Excellent. That's good to know, Darrell RCD. I shoot Mike Rowe an email about once a month trying to get him to come on my podcast to talk about the labor shortage, to talk about low voltage. So if anybody knows Mike Rowe, please put him in touch with me so I can get him on the show and we can talk about the labor impacts, right? Um time to learn estimating or project management. I just talked about, I just answered a question on how to learn estimating. Just talked about it literally five minutes ago. Um and if enough people say they're interested, I will bring back my three-hour estimating class.

Wi Fi 7 Expectations And Reality

SPEAKER_00 23:13

Uh next question, this comes from Nicole. Nicole says, we're getting more Wi-Fi 7 projects now. And we hear for Wi-Fi, the customer hears Wi-Fi 7, and they expect suddenly to be faster. How do you explain that the access point is only one piece and the cabling, switching, and design and environment still determine what they actually get? Oh, that's a great point. Set that expectation up soon. Okay. Remember, tell them those bandwidth promises that they hear from the Wi-Fi people, those are based on ideal situations. When you put in a wireless access point in, for example, like a warehouse, that signal has to go through concrete walls. It has to go through, you know, gypsum board walls, insulation. That propagates that that not propagates, but that that weakens this attenuates the signal. Okay, that weakens the signal. And then uh, you know, again, you're only as good as your weakest link. We know this from from on the cable side. If you put in cat 6 cable and you terminate with a with a cat 5e jack, you have a cat 5e performance level, even though you got cat 6 cable, right? Um so if they want that best performance, this is why Bixie recommends for wireless access point. And a lot of people argue with this with me. Bixie recommends two Category 6A cables to every access point. Two Category 6. So that way you get that full 10 gig to that 100 meter performance for that wireless access point. Because remember, wireless access points aggregate network signals, right? They're sharing bandwidth. So you have to have a bigger pipe for all that for that all for all that bandwidth, right? Ed says, remember to tell your customers that you are layer one of seven layers, and maybe part of it two through seven or slow. Exactly. You know, again, we're just dressed we're just talking about the things that we can actually have expectation on. But yeah, they see those specifications. And does the does the switching meet the cabling? Does the switching meet the access point? Did you place the access point correctly? I you know how many pictures I see of access points mounted on a wall, you know, vertically? That's not doing a good job to propagate the signal. Okay, read the instructions. Be the instructions. All right, and so that way you can learn how to do them. And uh also make sure that you you know you gotta explain this to the customer where you don't overwhelm them. I just did a video and I put it on LinkedIn. I don't remember if I put it on TikTok or not, but I talk about how the ICT people sound to other people. So I put a video of me, you know, talking about the ICT, and I overlaid it's one of the one of the one of the football quarterback people. I don't I don't remember who he is, and he's talking, he's he's been doing his calls in a huddle, and it obviously makes no sense. And it's like that's what we sound like to people, right? Daryl, the RCD says Wi-Fi 7 wants 4CAS 6A cables or single mode fiber plus power. Doing a design right now. Now, is that an industry thing, Daryl, or is that a customer thing? Um, because you know I hadn't heard the four cables, forecast six a cables make sense, especially for Wi-Fi 7.

unknown 26:24

Right?

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Absolutely makes sense. The next question comes from Javier.

Building Lead Techs Through Mentorship

SPEAKER_00 26:28

He says, I've been a foreman for nine years, and my biggest challenge isn't finding people who can pull cable. It's developing people who understand why we install a thing a certain way. How do you build that next generation of lead techs? And every project is already short on time. Okay. Here's the thing: that's a tale as old as time. I remember when I was a technician, we'd hired other technicians and they didn't care. They wanted to do it their way. They they didn't really care why. They didn't care to learn. Well, you know what? They're gone. This industry always weeds them out. So, what you're gonna have to do is you're gonna have to uh kind of try to find the people in advance, right? Start teaching them the standards, start teaching them the bixie best practices. Again, make sure they know that four-tier cake. That four-tier cake. The four-tier cake, okay, the bottom tier is codes. You've got to follow the codes, you don't have a choice no matter. The next tier up is the standards, okay, that guarantees performance. Codes only guarantee safety. So the standards of the next tier up guarantees performance. The next tier up is the Bixie best practice manuals like the pocket field guides or the RCDD or the TMM. And then the top one is manufacturer's instructions. So make sure they understand that that four-tier cake, because that's gonna help them. Because I get this a lot, you know, and this happens a lot when people talk about dressing cable, right? They say, Well, you know, you're not supposed to cable comb. Yes, you can. You absolutely can cable comb. You can, in fact, I've said this before in many shows, so I'm gonna repeat myself again because I'm gonna say this until I till I fall off the stage with a heart attack. You know, you can cable comb. You can cable comb. The manufacturers, when they do their alien crosstalk testing, they do it worst-case scenario. So, yes, you can. What you don't want to do is you don't want to over cinch the tie wraps or the cable binders, right, or the velcro. That's what starts causing problems. It used to be when CAD6A first came out, there was a lot of truth to the statement that you couldn't do it, but in today's environment, you can, right? Start creating a mentorship program. Again, watch that episode with uh Heather coming up in a few weeks. We talk about how to create mentorship programs and the advantages of mentorship programs. But you don't have to wait for that. You can be you can create a mentor program now. Pick if you got somebody and they're showing up on time every day and they're doing everything they're told, and when they finish a test, they come find you to do the next thing. That should be flags, green flags. Start investing in that person, start mentoring them, right? Maybe if you got a spare 80 bucks, go buy them the Bixie Pocket Field Guides and give them to them. That way it kind of helps explain, reinforce, because that way they don't think, oh, he's just saying that because he's a jerk. But when they read it in the book, oh, multi-mode fiber has multiple modes, it kind of reinforces what you're teaching them. Okay. Why do I have a fiber con that fiber thing over there? Let's move that. There we go. Um, and then uh the key is okay, once you taught them how to pull cable, terminate cable, then tell them how to help them learn troubleshooting skills. That that's gonna be the show tonight. I'm recording with Mike Panaki. We're gonna talk about certification goes more than you have to than just testing a getting a pass or a fail. It's learning how to read that tester. And that's what we're really going to talk about in a show with him tonight, right? Uh takes two now, but the next generation will need four 40 gigabit throughput. Oh my gosh. Uh the most boring job with wires. Uh-huh. And uh, we're also beta testing 40 gigabit Li-Fi. That's cool. Next question.

Who Owns Shared Network Decisions

SPEAKER_00 30:12

This comes from Greg. And he says, as more AV, security, wireless, and building control moves on the network, I'm seeing projects where nobody seems completely sure who owns the network decisions. Yeah, because they always punt it, right? Um, how should integrators handle responsibility when five systems all depend on the same infrastructure? Oh my gosh, that's a great question, right? So if you are the contractor doing the low voltage cabling, that's really not your responsibility. Sorry, it's not. You need to get the customer informed and on board with being the main point of contact. And the problem is, some companies that might be different people. They might have one person for structured cabling for the network, so the other one do the AEV stuff, another one doing, you know, building automation. They have to decide together who's going to be the single point of contact. So that way you don't waste time sending an email to one person, they got to send an email to another person and to another person, and then nothing works right. That's really for the customer. And that could be one of the things you can discuss. Like I mentioned at that kickoff meeting on that first question that I answered tonight, right? Because when you get that one person on board, that'll process that information faster and streamline everything because you're absolutely right. It used to be the network only had computer stuff on it. That absolutely used to be the other thing. Now you got voice on it, AV, security, access control, you know, all the kinds of stuff going on it. And that puts a better, uh more emphasis on making sure that we get the cabling and all that stuff done correctly. Next question, Lisa from Secure Buildings on LinkedIn.

Cybersecurity Boundaries For Low Voltage

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Cybersecurity conversations seem to be moving into every low voltage meeting now. Yep. Uh for structure cabling professionals, where do you think our responsibility starts? And where do you think our responsibility ends? Anthony's Aguero is in the house. Right. Um, so here we go. Um the physical, what we're really talking about is the physical layer versus of the physical versus the logical security. Right. And again, this we talked, we just talked just a few minutes ago about you can be just a cable guy or you can be a cable with one foot in the cave in layer one, the other one in layer two, and that's gonna help some. You need to create awareness, create the awareness that they need network segmentation.

unknown 32:48

Right?

SPEAKER_00 32:48

And you know, they're talking now about well, I'm not talking about, they've already done it. They've banned certain cameras. The federal government won't allow you to put certain cameras on their properties because of cybersecurity, right? And the same thing, they just banned those robot vacuum cleaners because they have back doors and stuff into them like that, right? The beard of knowledge is in the house. How are you doing, beard of knowledge? Um, also, um, you need to coordinate with the IT teams and you need to talk about things like how to reduce installation risks. It's cybersecurity is a huge thing. Obviously, I just got hit by cybersecurity because my LinkedIn account got shut down for seven days, ten days, something like that, because of cybersecurity. Um, companies are being shut down now because um of cybersecurity issues, because people, you know, fishing attempts, they've gotten way more advanced than they were before. And then on top of that, think about the flock cameras. The flock cameras. There's all kinds of people talking about security risk with that people hacking into them and being able to track people and all kinds of stuff. So it's always an issue we've got to worry about as a layer one guy, unless you're actually installing the equipment. If you're just doing cabling, there's not a whole lot you can do about that. But if you are putting in the cameras, the access control points, right? Um, then you need to be aware of that stuff. The beard knowledge says the flock cameras need to be shut down. I agree with you. Okay, next question is comes from Tyler.

Moving From Field To RCDD Design

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Tyler on where do you get from? It came from YouTube Shorts, YouTube Shorts. For someone with about five years in the field who's thinking about becoming an RCDD or moving into design, what experience should they make? What experience should they make sure they have before leaving the day-to-day installation behind? Okay. Alrighty. Uh some of us never leave the installation days behind. I've been an RCD for since 1999. That's 27 years, coming up on 30 years. And I still, still, still miss my installation days. I still refer back to those experiences. I'm using that experience now to finish the podcast build out. I'm gonna use that experience when I go to Philadelphia in August to do text giving. I'll be out there pulling cable, right? Just always remember this. Field experience is the gold standard. A gold standard. If I can, if I can, if I have two people, one person is absolutely brilliant with installing scripts and setting up hubs, routers, services, servers, stuff like that, and the other guys can do the exact same thing and cabling? Because they've done cabling, I'm going to do the cabling guy. Maybe that's a little bit biased there, but it just is. It just is. Make sure you learn your codes and standards, make sure you understand. Codes are for safety, standards are for performance. What's the difference between them? When do you have to follow each? What is the what is the depth, what what's the difference between the word should and shall? That's a big one. That's a big one. What's the difference between should and shall? Because those two words, while they sound similar, they're very, very different. Right? You need to understand those things. Learn to build up your communication skills. And you can go to um college, you to the tech, not tech school, but the the the community college and take classes on communication. Learn how to communicate, right? You but chuck all I gotta do is just write it down on an email. Yeah, yeah. If you send me an email with more than a paragraph, I'm probably not gonna read it. Sorry. If you if you send an email to somebody, learn, and there's there's an acronym to kind of talk about this. In the very first sentence is the ask. Is the ask. Thank you, wire monkey in Arizona. And then the second, the second, the first paragraph should give you the backup information on that. So that way they automatically don't make them read through two or three or four paragraphs to figure out what in the heck you want that that you're trying to ask them. Put that up front, okay? Um, and then learn how how the design uh is really comes out of installation realities. Yeah, you gotta do it per the code way, per the standards way, but we also know that sometimes customer expectations just kind of fall short. And think about career progression. Maybe, maybe, you know, yeah, I'm glad you're thinking about the RCD now, but what are you going to do after you get your RCDD? Are you gonna become an estimator, a trainer, a QA person? Are you gonna go work for an AE firm? Right? There's lots of avenues that you can go with that with that credential. So start thinking about that as well because that's gonna help you figure out what skills you need to learn now to be able to go that pathway. Don't just don't just do one issue, you know, I'm gonna get my RCD and then then rest on the lulls after that because you're gonna find pretty quickly that uh that just ain't gonna work. It's not gonna cut it. It's just not going to cut it. All right, let me flip back over to the oh my gosh, look at all those chat things. I did it again, I missed it. I missed it. Here we go. Let's go ahead and fire

New Estimator Advice And Wrap Up

SPEAKER_00 38:04

this one. Show in the stream. Any advice you can give someone who just started in the low voltage uh industry this year as an estimator? Excellent. Excellent. Um, so if you just started as a uh as a as an estimator, right? And you don't have any field experience, ask for cross-training. Ask to be sent out with the crews so you can learn what are the challenges. What what are the what are why is it different pulling spools versus cable in a box?

unknown 38:38

Right?

SPEAKER_00 38:39

What are those what are those differences? How do they affect the performance? Right? There you go. Uh, next question. This one again, any suggestions for any courses to design secure spaces for tempest requirements. Oh, that's a great question. Daryl, the RCD, are you still in the house? Um somebody's asking, where can I get some design courses for doing tempest and secured spaces? I'm not aware of any off the top of my head. I just got thrown to the wolves, right? So I'm not really sure. Let's see if if Daryl's still on, he can answer that question. This question comes from the Astro V. How to tell if you're taking a low voltage technique, how hard to tell if you're talking to low technique. Anyway, just ask him which why did it clear before I got done reading it? How to tell if you're talking to a low voltage technician at the hardware store. Easy. Ask him which ailes the brooms. Oh, which aisles the brooms are at? Oh, I must be an electrician. Must be an electrician, because they, you know, they don't ever sweep up stuff. As someone that should as someone that should, as someone had my low voltage license in a few weeks, what's the best way to get to my first clients? Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Um networking, networking, networking. Go to go to Bixie events, go to other events like the data center thing, and you will find dope, you will find customers there. Learn how to cold call, learn how to take rejection, because that's gonna happen. So Daryl saying uh he wouldn't take one now, but we are writing a new ICD 705 now with lots of changes. There you go. Excellent, excellent. I think I had one more question. Lots of great questions, people. We went 11 minutes past. 11 minutes past. I appreciate everybody being here tonight. So until next time, remember knowledge is power.