20 Questions to Ask Your AV Integrator Before Construction Starts

Most homeowners we meet have already interviewed two or three integrators by the time they get to us. They almost always tell us the same thing. The first meetings felt like sales presentations. Glossy renderings, branded folders, vague timelines, and a quote that arrived three days later with no real detail behind the numbers.

The fix is not a longer interview. The fix is the right twenty questions, asked early, with the architect and the general contractor in the room. If the integrator cannot answer these clearly and specifically, you do not have the right integrator. This is a list we wish more homeowners brought to the first meeting. None of these are unfair. None require the integrator to give away proprietary information. They are the basic competencies of someone who can carry a forever home project from design through service.

We have written more about how we run residential projects at our residential page and how the long-arc planning works at our forever homes approach.

1. Who Programs the Crestron System on My Project

The right answer names a person, not a company. The integrator should be able to tell you the name of the programmer who will write your code, where they sit, and whether they are an employee or a subcontractor. Programming that is shipped out of country or handed to a rotating bench of contractors produces systems that are harder to service and impossible to hand back to a different integrator if the relationship ends. Programming should stay in-house.

2. What Is Your Dealer Rank with Crestron, Lutron, and Ketra

Crestron has dealer tiers. The top rank is Elite Pro. Lutron, Ketra, and other primary platforms have their own structures. Ask the rank for each platform the integrator claims to deliver. If the answer is vague, the relationship with that manufacturer is probably thin. Manufacturers reserve their best technical support, fastest replacement parts, and earliest product access for their top-ranked dealers.

3. Will I Get a Copy of My Source Code

The right answer is yes, on site, in writing, as part of the contract. Source code is the file that lets a future integrator continue to service your system. Integrators who keep it locked are betting that you will never want to leave. That is a bet that should worry you, not them.

4. How Do You Handle Service After the Warranty Period

Ask for specifics. Twenty-four hour SLA, eight hour SLA, four hour SLA. Direct line to an on-call engineer, or a call center. Annual system reviews included or extra. The integrators worth working with have a real service program with named tiers. The ones who improvise after warranty are the ones whose phones get harder to reach the longer you have lived in the house.

5. What Does Your Network Stack Look Like

The right answer is enterprise-grade across the board. Managed switches, segmented networks, professional wireless access points, monitored uptime. Consumer-grade routers and access points do not belong in a home with this much technology, even if the consumer gear is expensive. Ask the integrator to name the platform and the model family they will deploy.

6. Do You Carry an IP-Controllable PDU on Every Rack

This is a small question that reveals a lot. An IP-controllable power distribution unit lets your service team reboot individual outlets remotely. It is a low-cost item that pays for itself the first time a piece of gear locks up at nine on a Sunday night. Integrators who skip it are optimizing for the bid, not the service life.

7. Who Owns the Low-Voltage Conduit Pathways

The integrator should own them or at minimum review and approve them before walls close. If the answer is “the electrician handles all conduit,” push back. Low-voltage pathway design is a different discipline than line-voltage electrical work. Mistakes here are buried in the walls and cost real money to fix later.

8. How Do You Coordinate with the Architect and the General Contractor

Ask for the integrator’s experience working under an AIA contract structure. Ask how they participate in design development, construction documents, and submittal review. Integrators who know how to operate inside the design team are the ones whose work ends up looking like part of the architecture rather than something bolted on at the end.

9. What Documentation Will I Receive at Project Close

The minimum is a room-by-room equipment list, a wiring schedule, one-line drawings, schematics, before-and-after photos with serial numbers, and a backend CRM record with passwords, usernames, and service history. If the integrator hands you a binder of generic manuals and a thank-you card, the work behind the walls is probably the same level of care.

10. Who Trains the End User

The right answer names a person, schedules a real session, and includes a follow-up visit thirty to sixty days after move-in. Training delivered to the house manager or the builder rather than the actual primary user is training that does not stick. Insist on a session with the people who will be using the system every day.

11. What Happens If I Want to Add a Room or a System in Five Years

Future-proofing is partly a hardware question and partly a documentation question. Ask what the integrator’s plan is for adding scope after the original installation. The right answer involves the documentation from question nine, the source code from question three, and a service team that can pick up the project without starting from zero.

12. Do You Subcontract Programming, Installation, or Service

There are integrators who keep design in-house and subcontract everything else. There are integrators who hold the relationship and let a roster of contractors do the actual work. Ask directly. The right model for a forever home is one team, programming in-house, installation by employees or long-term partners who have done dozens of projects together, and a service team that knows your system because they helped build it.

13. Can I Talk to Three Recent Clients

References should be specific, recent, and relevant to your project type. If you are building a luxury home, the references should be luxury homes, not commercial offices. If your house has a theater, ask to talk to a homeowner whose theater the integrator built. Vague references are usually a sign of vague work history.

14. Show Me a Project Where Something Went Wrong

This question separates serious operators from polished sales teams. Every integrator with real field history has projects that went sideways. The ones worth hiring will tell you which ones, what went wrong, and what they did about it. The ones who say everything has always gone perfectly are either inexperienced or dishonest.

15. What Is Your Process for Change Orders

The right answer is a written change order, signed before the work happens, with cost and schedule impact clearly stated. If the answer is “we just add it to the final bill,” you are not working with a professional firm. Surprise costs at project close are one of the most common complaints homeowners have about integrators, and they are almost entirely a process problem on the integrator’s side.

16. How Do You Stage Equipment and Programming Before Install

Serious integrators stage gear and write programming in their shop before bringing it to your house. The system gets powered up, tested, and adjusted in a controlled environment, then deployed to the home with most of the work already done. This shortens the trim-out window, reduces stress on your house, and produces a more polished result. Integrators who arrive with crates of unboxed equipment and plan to figure it out on site are wasting your construction window.

17. Will You Be on Site for Inspection and Final Walkthrough

The lead programmer and the project manager should both be present for inspection and for the final walkthrough with the homeowner. If you are handed off to a salesperson and a tech who has never been to your house, the firm is structured to maximize throughput, not relationship.

18. What Brands Do You Refuse to Install and Why

This is one of our favorite questions to be asked. A serious integrator has opinions about products and is willing to defend them. The integrator who says they will install anything you want is either trying not to lose the sale or has not developed the field judgment to know what fails in service. Ask the question. Listen to the reasoning.

19. How Do You Handle the Network When the Internet Goes Down

The right answer involves a local control path that does not depend on the cloud. Lighting should work. Theater should work. Audio should work. Cameras should record locally. Cloud-dependent designs are easier to sell and worse to live with. The integrator should be able to walk you through which functions degrade gracefully and which fail hard when the WAN connection drops.

20. What Will You Tell Me Not to Buy

The final question. The integrator should be willing to talk you out of equipment, scope, and platform decisions that will not serve you well over twenty years in the house. We have walked away from projects where the homeowner insisted on something we did not believe in. That is the right outcome for both sides. An integrator who will not push back is an integrator who is optimizing for this quarter, not your forever home.

A Note on the Conversation Itself

These twenty questions are not a quiz. They are a conversation. If the integrator answers them clearly, gives specific examples, and asks you questions back about your priorities and your house, you are probably in the right room. If the answers are vague, defensive, or sales-led, that is the answer you needed.

Restrepo Innovations is an Elite Pro Crestron Dealer and HTA Luxury Certified integrator. We program in-house, we leave source code on site, and we run a real service program with a twenty-four hour direct line to a Restrepo on-call engineer, not a call center, not a third-party triage layer. We work residential, commercial, hospitality, and government projects across NJ, NY, and CT. Call 201.405.2022 if you want a first conversation that does not feel like a sales pitch.