ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade Business Related Discussion Other trades with electrical-General Contractor

Just a quick question. I am a Master Electrician and an Electrical Contractor in the State of Colorado. My brother n law is a carpenter and my younger brother is a plumber. I currently own my own business. Can I make my company into an all inclusive Construction company? Such as my company doing the electrical, plumbing and construction work on a project? I have never heard of this before, most GC hire this company to do plumbing and this other company to do electrical. But we all have great reputations in our fields and would like to go into together. Would I just need to be the GC and my brother n law and brother I would hire them as needed as subs or how would that work? Since there is different issues with different fields would they have to start seperate business? Not sure, please let me know what you think. They would all be doing seperate things. The plumber would not be doing an electrical, etc.

In Florida there is nothing wrong with that idea. In fact if the company held all 3 licenses and the mechanics were working "under the supervision" of the licensed person (which basically means they should have met) everyone could actually do everything.
They are trying to get a journeyman's card requirement through and in this climate, with so little work and so many qualified people, that might actually happen. Two years ago, if you had a rusty pair of Kliens and a mouth full of wirenuts you were an electrician.

"a mouth full of wirenuts "

Ahh, now I understand why they come in different colors ... they're different flavors! Thanks!

OK, now, for the real post:

Your local laws would determine the details. Here's how it works in Nevada:
A company must have a 'business qualified' person, as well as a 'trade qualified' person for each license. One person is very often considered 'qualified' in both business and one trade, but it starts getting tricky for one person to qualify for more than one trade.
You see, the 'trade qualified' person has to document five years of work at journeyman level. In addition to this period, circumstances also conspire to make this in additional to completing a several-year long apprenticeship program. Therefore, it's pretty hard for one person to be 'qualified' in more than one trade.

So, your proposed company would, by Nevada rules, need at least three 'qualified persons' in order to hold the necessary licenses. Should any of those people leave, you have a very, very short period in which to come up with another 'qualified person.' Essentially, that person has to already be on board, and ready to begin the application / testing process right then.

That's another devil in the details; there's essentially no way for a person to become 'qualified' in advance. If you were in the middle of a project, and (for example) your guy holding the 'general' license were to get hit by drunken alien who wandered away from Area 51, your company is going to be hurting.

I think you can see that this sort of arrangement has some special concerns, that will have to be addressed in the way you organize the company.

I suppose the real point is you need to make your local government happy. There are as many different rules as there are AHJs.
Usually when this happens that one person is qualified in more than one trade is during that grandfather period right after the laws are passed. They get to lump a lot of the same time into more than one trade and the licensing authority is still trying to figure out what "experience" really means since there was no real recording before they had a law.
In Florida in the period around 1994-5 when they were hammering out the state licensing laws and getting people certified it really didn't take much to be licensed if you were good with standardized tests. I know I was looking at the "Limited Low Voltage" license, using my IBM connectivity (data cabling) training and experience as the qualifications and the DBPR person said I could be an "Unlimited EC" if I wanted to post the higher bond and I could pass the test.
In the end I just went for inspector. I didn't want to work that hard and I was already IAEI certified in all three disciplines. The test at the time was just the SBCCI inspector test. (a lot easier than IAEI in my opinion)

Now they are a lot more specific about what constitutes experience.
If you were one of those "one man band" GCs you still can usually come up with the hours for just about anything tho.

... or you could just be old

Been around here like that for a while,And getting more popular. Especially on the residential end.
One call?! How can you go wrong?

As long as all the licenses are in order... Wheres the issue?

We even have a hand full of commercial outfits doing this.

Again...1 call..

I just teamed up with a heating contractor and a plumber to compete against a large local co. that offers package deals to gc's. Fortuanatly, they don't do any of the electrical, plumbing , heating all that well. He just called and informed me that we got the 1st job, no questions asked and have another to bid that will start asap. I'm happy for the work but not exicited about doing new work. It will give me chance to brush up on the new code.(we'll adopt 2008 this year)

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