Key takeaways
- In Texas, a business doing electrical work for hire needs an electrical contractor license from TDLR, and you can look it up yourself in a minute.
- Ask for proof of general liability and workers' compensation coverage before anyone sets foot on your property.
- A good bid names the scope, the permit, the inspections and how changes are priced. A vague bid is where costs grow.
- Ask who pulls the permit with the City of San Antonio and who meets the inspector. The answer should be the contractor.
Hiring a commercial electrical contractor in San Antonio is a different decision from hiring someone to swap a ceiling fan at home. The stakes are higher, the code is stricter, the inspections are more frequent, and a delay can keep a tenant from opening on time. The good news is that most of what separates a solid contractor from a risky one can be checked before you sign.
Check the license before anything else
In Texas, a company that does electrical work for others needs an electrical contractor license from the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, and every contractor must have a licensed master electrician responsible for the work. You can search any license number on the TDLR website. If a bidder cannot give you a number, or the number does not match the company name on the bid, stop there.
Our license and insurance details are published on our insurance and licensing page, so you can check them the same way you would check anyone else.
Ask for insurance in writing
Ask for a certificate of insurance showing general liability and workers' compensation, with your company or your property manager named where your lease requires it. A contractor who does real commercial work has these on file and can send them the same day.
Read the bid for what it leaves out
A clean bid says what is included, what is assumed and what is excluded. It names the permit, the inspections, the fixtures and devices, and who supplies them. It also says how a change will be priced. The bids that grow after signing are usually the ones that left those lines blank.
- The scope, room by room or panel by panel.
- Who pulls the permit and who meets the inspector.
- Which fixtures and equipment are included and which the owner supplies.
- Working hours, and whether nights or weekends are part of the price.
- How a change order is priced and approved before the work is done.
Permits and inspections in San Antonio
Inside the city, commercial electrical permits go through the City of San Antonio Development Services Department, and suburban cities run their own permit offices. Larger jobs often need drawings with the permit. A contractor who handles commercial work regularly will know the order of inspections for your type of job and will schedule them so they do not hold up the other trades.
If your project is a new suite or a remodel, our tenant build-out page walks through how we run those jobs, and our commercial electrical services page covers the rest of what we do for businesses.
Ask how they handle an occupied building
If people are working in the building, ask how outages are planned. Good contractors schedule shutdowns with you in advance, keep them short, and do the noisy work when the space is empty. If a bidder has no answer, they have not done much work in occupied spaces.
Some commercial jobs start with a service or panel that cannot carry the new load. The same questions apply there, and our panel upgrade service explains what that work involves.