AV Consulting
Introduction
A company is building a new headquarters with forty meeting rooms, a town hall and a broadcast studio. It could ask an integrator to design and supply the AV. Or it could hire someone whose only job is to work out what the company needs, design it, write it down so any integrator can bid for it fairly, and then check that what gets built is what was designed. That second person is the AV consultant.
This book is about that role: working for the client and nobody else, finding out what people really need, designing through the same phases as the architect, writing specifications that invite fair competition, running the bids, watching the build, and testing the result before the client accepts it. It also covers the consultant's own business: the scope, the fee and the contract.
It draws on published sources: AVIXA's standards and guide for verifying AV systems, the architects' standard design phases, the construction specification system, United States federal procurement rules, and the ethics rules of neighbouring consulting professions.
How to Use This Book
Read it in the order a project runs: independence, needs, design, specification, bids, construction and handover, then the business. Technical Sales & Pre-Sales covers the integrator's side of the same projects, and Systems Design the design craft itself.
What AV Consulting Is
Independent expert advice for the client.
The AV consultant
AV consulting is advising clients on their audiovisual needs as an independent expert — helping them understand what they need, designing and specifying the right solutions, and guiding their AV projects, all for the client's benefit. The AV consultant works for the client (not to sell them products): they're the client's trusted AV expert, providing independent, knowledgeable advice and design. Where an integrator builds systems and a salesperson sells products, the consultant advises and designs independently on the client's behalf. The AV consultant is the client's trusted, independent AV advisor.
This matters because clients (companies, institutions, venues planning AV) often need expert guidance they can trust — someone who understands AV deeply and advises in their interest, helping them get the right solution. The independent AV consultant fills this role. The AV consultant provides the expert, independent guidance clients need.
The AV consultant combines deep AV expertise, independence, design and specification skill, project guidance and a trusted-advisor relationship. It is usually a senior career, reached after deep AV and design experience, valuable to clients who need expert, unbiased guidance, and respected and well paid. It draws on broad AV knowledge plus client and business skills.
Independence and expertise
Two things define the AV consultant: independence and expertise. Independence — the consultant advises for the client's benefit, vendor-neutral (not tied to selling particular products or systems), so their advice is trusted and unbiased (they recommend what's right for the client, not what earns them a sale). Expertise — the consultant has deep, broad AV knowledge (across the disciplines, systems, and technology) to advise and design well. This combination (independent + expert) is what makes the consultant valuable and trusted. The consultant's value is independent, expert, client-side advice.
This independence and expertise is the consultant's distinctive value: clients trust them precisely because they're knowledgeable and on the client's side (not selling). It distinguishes consulting from sales/integration (which have a stake in selling). The consultant is trusted because they're both expert and independent.
An independent consultant is paid only by the client, and earns nothing from what the client buys. That is the whole value of the role: the advice cannot be bent by a sale. InfoComm, now AVIXA, once ran a council of Independent Consultants in Audiovisual Technology, whose members its chair described as client advocates with an independent approach to design and equipment specification.
AV has no published society rule on this that this book could check, so the clearest wording comes from neighbouring professions. The UK Association of Noise Consultants' rules say a member must not receive commissions or any other financial advantage for recommending products, must declare any commercial relationship with products to the client, and acts as a faithful agent or trustee for each client. The US engineers' code of ethics from the NSPE says the same in its own words: engineers do not accept financial or other considerations from suppliers for specifying their products, or commissions from contractors dealing with their clients, and they disclose any conflict of interest.
In practice that means no commissions, no rebates, no free designs from manufacturers in return for specifying them, and a written declaration of any interest the client should know about. A consultant who also sells equipment is not independent, whatever they call themselves.
Practice it
A manufacturer offers to design a client's whole conference system for free if the consultant specifies its products.
Understanding & Advising
Understand needs and give expert advice.
Understanding the client's needs
Consulting starts with understanding the client's needs deeply — what they want to achieve, their requirements, their space and constraints, their budget, and their real underlying needs (sometimes beyond what they first say). The consultant listens, asks, and investigates to truly understand the client's situation and goals. This understanding is the foundation of good advice — you can't advise or design well without it. Understanding the client's needs is the first job of consulting. The consultant understands the client's needs deeply before advising.
This requires strong listening, questioning, and analysis (drawing out the real needs, not just the stated wants), plus the expertise to understand the implications. A consultant who truly understands the client gives advice that fits; one who doesn't gives generic or wrong advice. The consultant's advice starts with deeply understanding the client.
Advising the client
With needs understood, the consultant advises — giving expert, independent guidance on what the client should do: the options, the recommendations, the trade-offs, and the best path for their needs and budget. This advice is knowledgeable (informed by deep AV expertise), independent (in the client's interest, not to sell), and clear (helping the client understand and decide). Good advice helps the client make the right decisions for their AV. Advising the client well is central to consulting. The consultant gives expert, independent advice for the client's benefit.
This is the core of consulting: providing trusted expert guidance that helps the client navigate AV decisions well (what to do, what to choose, how to approach it). The consultant's advice, grounded in expertise and independence, is what the client pays for. The consultant advises the client expertly and in their interest.
Needs analysis and programming
Every project starts by finding out what people need, before anyone draws anything. AVIXA calls this the programme phase. AVIXA's guidance describes stakeholder meetings, interviews, questionnaires and site visits, producing a non-technical programme report on the client's needs, purposes and budget that the client signs off before design begins.
Ask about tasks, not equipment. Who meets in this room, how many, how often, with whom outside the building, and what goes wrong today. A client who asks for a bigger screen may need people at the back to read spreadsheets; that is a sizing problem with a precise answer, as Projection & Display Systems shows.
Site survey
Measure the real space, not the drawing. Rooms change between the architect's plan and the building: columns appear, ceilings drop, windows face the wrong way. Note the dimensions, ceiling heights, windows and light, noise, power, data, and where equipment could live, and photograph everything.
Practice it
A client asks for "the same video system as our London office" for a new boardroom.
Designing & Specifying
Design solutions and specify what's needed.
Designing solutions
AV consultants often design the solution — determining the AV system the client needs and designing it (drawing on Systems Design). The consultant designs a system that meets the client's needs, fits their space and budget, and serves their goals, producing the design and documentation (independently, in the client's interest). This consultant-led design gives the client an expert, unbiased system designed for them (not by a vendor selling their products). Designing solutions is central to AV consulting. The consultant designs the right AV solution for the client.
This applies systems-design expertise (Systems Design) in the consulting context: the independent consultant designs the client's system, ensuring it's right for them. Many AV consultants are essentially independent designers/engineers working for clients. The consultant designs systems independently for the client's benefit.
Specifying and vendor-neutrality
The consultant specifies what the client needs — the equipment, systems, and standards — in a specification the client can use to procure and build (often putting it out to integrators/vendors to bid and build). Crucially, this is vendor-neutral — the consultant specifies what's best for the client (the right products and approach for their needs), independent of any vendor, so the client gets an unbiased specification. The consultant then helps the client procure (evaluating bids/vendors) and oversees delivery. Specifying independently is central to consulting. The consultant specifies the right solution, vendor-neutrally, for the client.
This vendor-neutral specification (and helping the client procure and oversee) is a key consultant function — the client gets an expert, unbiased spec and guidance through getting it built, with the consultant as their advocate. The consultant specifies and guides procurement independently, for the client.
The design phases
AV design follows the building's design. The architects' standard agreement, AIA B101, runs basic services in five phases: schematic design, design development, construction documents, procurement, and construction. The AV consultant's work tracks them. Schematic design sets the systems and the rooms they serve; design development fixes the equipment and its space, power and data; construction documents give drawings and specifications detailed enough for any integrator to price and build.
Fees are often split by phase. The State of Washington's guideline for architects and engineers on public projects puts schematic design at 18 per cent of the fee, design development 20, construction documents 31, bidding 2, construction administration 27 and closeout 2. Those are the same five phases under Washington's names, procurement called bidding and construction called construction administration, plus a short closeout phase at the end. It is a guideline, not a rule, but it shows where the work lies: in the documents, and in the building.
Coordinating with the design team
AV depends on everyone else's drawings. The architect places walls, ceilings and furniture; the electrical engineer provides power and conduit; the IT team provides the network; the mechanical engineer decides how noisy the room will be. AV needs backing for displays, floor boxes, ceiling space for speakers and projectors, conduit sizes and rack rooms, and each has to be on someone else's drawing in time. AVIXA's documentation standard for AV systems exists to align AV documents with the architectural and engineering set.
Vendor-neutral specification
The construction specification system puts AV in MasterFormat Division 27, Communications, created in 2004 when the old electrical division was split; AV systems commonly sit in section 27 41 00, Audio-Video Systems.
There are four ways to specify, CSI's Kevin O'Beirne explains: descriptive, performance, reference standard and proprietary. Proprietary specifications name products, either open, allowing "or equal" alternatives, closed, or sole-source. US federal purchasing rules prefer performance specifications to encourage innovative solutions, and allow "brand name or equal" when the salient characteristics an equal must meet are written down.
Most AV specifications name a basis of design and allow equals that meet or exceed it. Cornell University's AV specification is a typical example: substitutions only with the owner's representative's written consent, during the question period before bids close. Write down what an equal must do, or "or equal" means nothing.
Practice it
You must specify a meeting-room camera without favouring one maker.
Guiding the Project & Trust
Guide delivery and be the trusted advisor.
Guiding the project
The consultant often guides the client through the whole project — from needs and design through procurement (helping select integrators/vendors and evaluate bids) to delivery (overseeing the build/installation on the client's behalf, ensuring it's done right and meets the design and the client's needs). The consultant is the client's expert representative through the project, protecting their interests and ensuring a good result. Guiding the project is a key consulting function. The consultant guides the client through the project to a good result.
This means the consultant stays involved beyond advice/design — helping the client procure and overseeing delivery so the project succeeds (the right system, well-built, meeting needs). The consultant is the client's advocate and expert eyes throughout. The consultant guides and protects the client through the whole project.
Trust and the advisor relationship
At its core, consulting rests on trust — the client trusts the consultant as their expert advisor, acting in their interest. This trust (built on expertise, independence, integrity, and good results) is the consultant's foundation and reputation. Clients hire consultants they trust, and consultants build careers on trusted relationships and reputation. Being a trusted advisor (expert, independent, acting in the client's interest, reliable) is the essence of consulting. Building and keeping trust is central to AV consulting. The consultant is, above all, the client's trusted expert advisor.
This trusted-advisor relationship (the client relying on the consultant's expertise and integrity) is what consulting is and what makes it valuable. Combining understanding needs, advising, designing and specifying, guiding the project, and trust is AV consulting. The consultant serves the client as their independent, expert, trusted advisor. This is consulting at its core. The AV consultant earns and serves the client's trust.
Trust is the consultant's only product. It is built by giving the same honest advice whether or not it is welcome, by declaring every interest, and by standing by the client during construction when an integrator pushes back. Clients who trust their consultant call them first on the next project, and recommend them to the next client.
Bids and choosing the integrator
With the documents complete, integrators bid. Choosing on the lowest price alone is risky: bids are only comparable once they are levelled, which is called bid levelling: each checked for what it includes, excludes, offers as an alternate or leaves unclear. A low bid that left out cabling is not low.
Selection rules differ. US federal sealed bidding awards to the responsible bidder whose conforming bid is best on price, while design services are chosen on qualifications, then a fair price is negotiated with the best-qualified firm. The same federal rules stop the firm that designed a project from being awarded its construction, which is the independence principle written into law.
Construction administration
During the build the consultant reviews the integrator's submittals, shop drawings and product data; answers questions; assesses changes; and visits site to check the work against the design. The Washington guideline gives this phase more than a quarter of the fee, because it is where a design either survives or is quietly changed.
Commissioning and acceptance
AVIXA's performance verification standard, ANSI/AVIXA 10:2013, gives 160 reference verification items in 13 categories, from audio and video performance to cable labelling, control, documentation and serviceability. Its guide notes that few projects use all 160; the standard sets out how to choose. Verification is reported in four phases: pre-integration, systems integration, post-integration and closeout.
The guide's first rule is plain: you cannot verify against something that does not exist, so the project's documentation comes first. Test each room against it, list what must be fixed, and only then recommend the client accept the system. Then hand over the documentation and train the people who will run it.
Fees, contracts and scope
The consultant's own proposal sets out the scope, the phases, the deliverables, the number of site visits, and the fee, either a fixed sum or a percentage of the construction budget. The AIA notes that its standard agreement bases percentage fees on the owner's budget, not on the final cost. Write down what is excluded, and what happens when the project grows.
Practice it
Three bids arrive for a 40-room project: $410,000, $455,000 and $470,000.
AV Consulting Mastered
Senior, independent, trusted expertise.
Developing as an AV consultant
Developing as an AV consultant means building deep, broad AV expertise (across the disciplines and systems design — usually after significant AV and design experience), developing client, communication, and business skills, building integrity and a trusted reputation, and gaining consulting experience. It connects to Systems Design, the business and client books, and broad AV knowledge, plus credentials (like AVIXA CTS-D) that signal expertise. The best AV consultants combine deep expertise, true independence and integrity, strong client skills, and a trusted reputation, built over a career. Deliberately developing these is the path forward.
From here, growing as a consultant means advising on bigger and more complex projects, building reputation and trusted relationships, and reaching the top of AV consulting. It's a senior, respected, well-paid destination for deeply experienced AV professionals. The skills this book brings together — expertise, independence, advising, designing, trust — are the foundation; mastery comes from deep experience and a trusted reputation built over years. Keep building your expertise and integrity, keep serving clients well, and you grow towards AV consulting. (Remember: this is professional guidance, not legal/tax/financial advice.)
Glossary
| AV consultant | An independent expert advising clients on AV |
| Independence | Advising for the client, vendor-neutral |
| Procurement | Acquiring the equipment/build (consultant guides it) |
| Specification | The independent spec of what the client needs |
| Trusted advisor | An expert the client trusts and relies on |
| Vendor-neutral | Not tied to selling particular products |
| Needs | What the client requires (the basis of advice) |
| CTS-D | AVIXA's AV design certification |
| Programme report | The signed-off record of needs, purposes and budget |
| Basis of design | The product named as the reference an equal must meet |
| Or equal | An alternative accepted if it meets the specified characteristics |
| Division 27 | The MasterFormat division for communications, including AV |
| Bid levelling | Comparing bids for what they include before comparing prices |
| Submittal | An integrator's drawings or product data sent for review |
| Performance verification | Testing the system against its documents, per ANSI/AVIXA 10 |
Where to Go Next
Systems Design covers the design craft, Technical Sales & Pre-Sales the integrator's side of the same projects, and Integration Project Management the delivery. AVIXA's CTS-D certification is the recognised credential for AV design.
What the gear actually looks like
Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.
Find the destination.
Work along the path between them.