Our Electrical Services Division

For the 20 years RMS has been in business, we’ve designed and engineered connected homes and businesses that included lighting controls. For most of those projects, we’ve needed to interface with a third party to install those lighting controls (and other electrical services). While we always delivered for our clients, conflicts created inefficiencies, or worse, a compromised final design. We realized we needed a better solution for the high level of customer experience we demanded.

We’ve always prided ourselves on understanding our clients through a thorough needs analysis. We deliver on our promises by designing each system around those individual needs. In many ways, we already acted much like an architectural firm, so it made perfect sense for us to expand our offerings to clients to include our emergent electrical services division as part of our revamped integrated product delivery.

If you’re not familiar with the integrated product delivery (IDP) model, it assigns a great deal of responsibility to the key stakeholders of any given project. RMS listens to your needs, discovers your intent and designs according to those factors. We then become the designer and preserver of your intent through the duration of the project.

The other (and sadly, predominant) project model, known as “design-bid-build,” creates a matrix of overlapping responsibilities wherein multiple parties can claim, or shirk, responsibility. Invariably, chaos ensues and results in highly compromised intent and a project that runs over budget. The IDP model is superior in every regard.

When RMS is enabled to act as the overseer of the project from start to finish, we ensure delivery of the client’s intentions. We work with other industry trade partners not within the RMS purview (e.g. framing, drywallers, millwork, HVAC contractors, plumbing, etc.) to create a holistic, organized, beautiful, and functional result. It’s far more responsibility for us, but that’s by design.

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How does this relate to the recent launch of our electrical services division? We discovered that far too often, we could not guarantee, on a given project, the level of proficiency of the industry trade partner responsible for the lighting design and installation. The outcomes were unpredictable and strayed too much from clients’ intent for our comfort level. We needed to ensure the client vision would always be protected.

Many contractors on these projects had never worked with lighting control systems, and very few had the necessary knowledge and experience with LED lighting. That needed to change. Home electricity hasn’t undergone many revolutionary changes in the past few decades – breaker panels and personal safety devices have been updated to meet code, but that’s about it – yet LED lighting is the one breakthrough technology. LED lighting is definitively the standard and will be for the foreseeable future as it is significantly more energy efficient than the use of incandescent bulbs. Thomas Edison, you had a good run.

We discovered quickly that the vast majority of those installing lighting lacked the necessary knowledge base for implementing LED lighting. Have you ever been in a home where the LED lights flicker? Of course you have. Ours don’t do that. What we provide isn’t magic—it’s science and engineering. We put in our due diligence and research into every single light we install. Lighting needs to be beautiful, and it must be designed with intention.

For instance, one can find a myriad of lighting fixtures available for purchase: some are great, some are functional, and many are quite bad! Price isn’t always the determining variable, as some lousy ones aren’t cost-effective, and some great ones are affordable. Very few can parse the differences, but RMS does. We take the time to learn these nuances because they are fundamentally important.

Furthermore, we wanted to apply our unique RMS vision to another industry! We saw a need that we could fill, and frankly, our clients think we’re really nice to work with! When we’re able to help educate clients which lighting and electrical offerings would work best for them - many people don’t know a great dimmer system from a doorstop, and are delighted to learn the variety of beautiful and affordable options out there - we further our foundational trustworthiness and deliver even more value.

While we find that designing and installing gorgeous lighting control systems consistently provides superior value to clients, we also provide full-scale electrical services, ranging from whole-home generators and service upgrades to simply recommending and installing new fixtures!

Our rapidly growing electrical services division is helmed by Grant Lehman and Matt Bland, two industry veterans full-time with a combined 40+ years of electrical field experience among them. We’re also partnering with Thaddeus Stevens and Lancaster CTC in their electrical technology programs with opportunities for young electricians to apprentice, and potentially, join this rapidly growing division. Grant himself is a graduate of Thaddeus Stevens’ electrical services program.

When the job requires top-grade lighting and electrical services (hint: this is every project), RMS insists on giving clients great value. We’ll always take the time needed to get it right, and the earlier in the design process that we have the conversation about what you want out of your home or business, the better. Reach out to our skilled team when you’re ready to upgrade not just your space, but your expectations for the level of service an electrician ought to provide.