Frequently Asked Questions

Because we are not financing your project.

A large integrator carries your project on its balance sheet from purchase order to final payment, and the cost of carrying it is inside the number they quote you. We take a deposit that covers the estimated project cost up front. We are not lending you the money, so you are not paying us to lend it, and that difference goes into your price instead of our margin.

It is the mechanism that makes the price lower, so we lead with it rather than bury it in the terms.

It means we buy your equipment outright instead of borrowing against it, it means we are not exposed to the carrying cost of a project that runs long, and it means the number we quoted is the number that holds. Larger firms fund that exposure by building it into the rate. We remove it instead.

Sometimes yes, and we will tell you which levers are real.

Phasing the work across budget years is real. Reusing infrastructure that already works instead of replacing it is real. Reducing the number of rooms in scope is real. Choosing a lower room standard where the room does not need the higher one is real.

Skipping discovery or the network readiness audit is not. That does not make a project cheaper, it makes the overrun arrive later, as a change order, when you have less room to absorb it.

We would rather you spent the discovery money with someone else than skip it with us.

The worst thing we have ever found in a network readiness audit was a company weeks away from committing seven figures to AV, on a network with no multicast traffic management of any kind. Audio and video over IP is multicast traffic. Unmanaged, it floods every port it can reach. That audit cost a few days. Skipping it would have bought a seven figure system that fails in a way that looks like an AV problem and is not.

Discovery is not an upsell in front of the real work. It is the part that decides whether the real work functions.

No, and we would be guessing if we did.

The same room costs different money depending on the ceiling, the network, the existing infrastructure and what the room actually has to do.

Ask us and we will reissue it.

Equipment prices move. Tariffs move, freight moves, local labor moves. If a proposal has been sitting for a couple of quarters we will update it and tell you what changed and why, rather than let you sign a number that stopped being true.

Commercial AV is an IT system with speakers attached. Before we design anything we test the network the system has to live on: capacity, segmentation, switching, addressing, and what happens to AV traffic when the building is full.

Run it in the other order and the network problem surfaces on commissioning day, when the fix is a change order and a delay.

Four standards, all on one platform. Core for huddle and focus rooms. Plus for small to medium rooms. Pro for large conference rooms. Elite for boardrooms and executive spaces, defined by what the room has to do rather than by how many chairs are in it.

Portfolios of twenty-five rooms or more run under SSAV Campus, in one location or many, phased against your capital plan.

We standardize on Q-SYS across every room standard, so a huddle room and a boardroom behave the same way, report the same way and get supported the same way.

Beyond that, we select specific hardware for your rooms and disclose it in your proposal. We do not publish a brand list, because we would rather design to what your rooms need than to a vendor relationship we are trying to protect.

Yes. We can integrate with your service management platform so an AV fault arrives in the system your team already works in, instead of as a phone call to whoever picked up last time.

We plan for three to eight years depending on how fast the product category moves, and we track it for you.

We enter every piece we install into an inventory record by serial number, asset type, quantity and year of purchase. When something needs replacing, or your auditor or insurer asks what is in the building, the answer is already written down.

Yes. On both standard installations and managed AV, the equipment is yours once the final invoice is paid. We are the procurement function inside the delivery, not the owner of your system.

Venue partnerships work the other way around. There, we fund the equipment, we own it, we maintain it and we refresh it at end of life, and the property carries no capital. That is the whole point of the structure.

Three people are accountable for your show and you will meet all of them. A Producer owns scope, budget and delivery. A Project Manager owns the schedule, the paper and the weekly written status. A Technical Director owns the technical design and everything that happens on site.

On a large show those are three teams. The accountability does not change.

Two different mechanisms, and we keep them apart on purpose.

Scope freezes roughly fourteen days before load-in. After that, anything you add or change is a change order: priced and approved before anyone acts on it.

Separately, if our own sourcing comes in more than ten percent over the line we budgeted, that comes back to you before we commit the money. That rule is about our estimate, not your decisions.

No. Rigging, power, structural and weather calls belong to the Technical Director and they are not subject to schedule or budget override. Not by you, not by your client, not by us. If the answer is no, we work the problem from there.

Seventy-two hours is the shortest we will take, and we will tell you what the rush costs before you commit to it. Compressing a production timeline means paying for speed at every step: freight, labor calls, overtime, and sourcing whatever is available rather than whatever is right. We can do it. Ask.

Sixty days is our minimum for comfortable planning. Three to six months is where the good shows live, because that is when the decisions that matter are still open.

No. It is easier, not cheaper, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling.

Sourcing your own gear and crew comes in lower on the equipment line. It also hands you the red tape: rigging approvals, power orders, dock windows, insurance certificates, and a house contract written by the house to protect the house. If you know how to work all of that, take it on and keep the savings. If you do not, the savings can disappear inside a single rigging conversation, and you will be having that conversation alone at six in the morning on load-in day.

Come to us first, before the sales manager quotes you.

Depending on the relationship and how the event books, we can usually get you close to what you would pay sourcing it yourself. Sometimes the house takes the hit on the commission. Sometimes we take the margin cut. Sometimes the rate is the rate, and you will hear that from us directly rather than finding it in the final invoice. We will tell you which case you are in.

Often, if you ask on the first call.

If you are a producer, or a planner who runs the technical side yourself, say so. A planner rate is usually what you are actually asking for when you push back on a house quote, and where it makes sense we honor it.

No capital.

We fund the equipment, we own it, we maintain it and we refresh it at end of life. You earn a revenue split written into the contract, exclusive or non exclusive, with exclusivity carrying the higher split.

Nationally, and internationally for the right project.

Everything we offer, we deliver anywhere in the country. What we do not do is take every one-off show that comes past. We take work we can do properly, which usually means a client we expect to still be working with in five years rather than a single room in a city we have no reason to be in. Bring us a project worth doing and we will make the geography work.

Book a consultation and tell us the problem rather than the equipment. What has to happen in the room, who is joining from somewhere else, and what success looks like when every seat is taken. We work backward from there.