Company switch

A company switch is a permanently installed, breakered box provided by a venue specifically so an incoming production can connect its own distribution. It exists because the alternative — a production opening the building’s electrical panels — is neither legal nor welcome.

Ratings commonly run from 100 to 400 amps, three phase, with connection usually by cam-style connectors. Landing feeder on one is called a tie-in.

The questions to ask about a company switch are not about its existence but about its particulars, and they belong in the site survey. What is it rated at, which is often lower than the room suggests. Where is it, because its position decides the feeder run and a switch at the opposite end of a ballroom is a hundred feet of cable across a route the audience will use. Whether more than one event is sharing it that day. And who is permitted to perform the tie-in — many venues require their own electrician or a licensed one, and that is a scheduled, charged call rather than something a crew does on arrival.

Where there is no company switch, or where it is too small, the options are a generator outside or a temporary service, and both have to be arranged well ahead rather than discovered on the day the trucks arrive.

Corporate event production — owned inventory, our own crew, and a site survey before anything is specified.

• Cam-Lok (camlock) The single-pole connector feeder cable lands on — one conductor per connector, colour-coded by convention rather than by code, and connected ground first.
• Shore power Using the building’s own supply instead of generating your own — quieter, cheaper and cleaner when it exists in the quantity the show needs, which is the part to check.
• Generator (event) Portable power for a site that has none — specified by the load it will actually carry, sited for noise and exhaust, and hurt more by running too light than too heavy.