Divisions 27 & 28 Under One Sub: The Case GCs Are Making

On the last commercial set we bid, the low-voltage scope was split across four subcontractors: one pulling cable, one hanging cameras, one on access control, and an alarm company nobody had met yet. Four submittal packages, four insurance certs, four schedules to sequence — and one door that needed a strike, a reader, a camera and a network drop, with no single trade responsible for making those four things work as one door.

That door is why more GCs are awarding Division 27 and Division 28 to a single subcontractor. Here’s the case for it, the honest math, and the situations where consolidation is the wrong call.

What the two divisions cover

In CSI MasterFormat terms: Division 27 (Communications) is the structured cabling plant — Cat6/6A horizontal, fiber backbone, racks, patch panels, wireless infrastructure and the testing that proves it. Division 28 (Electronic Safety & Security) is everything that protects the building — access control, video surveillance, intrusion detection and fire alarm.

On paper they’re separate specs. In the building they’re one nervous system: every Division 28 device is a Division 27 endpoint. A camera is a PoE drop with an opinion. An access controller is a network appliance bolted to a door frame.

The interfaces are where projects bleed

Split the divisions and you create seams that nobody owns. The cabling sub terminates to the rack and walks; the camera sub claims the drop tests bad; the access contractor is waiting on a strike the electrician thought was in the door hardware package. Each RFI at those seams costs a week, and the GC referees all of it.

Under one sub, those aren’t interfaces — they’re internal coordination, handled at the shop-drawing stage instead of discovered at trim. The door with the strike, reader, camera and drop is one trade’s problem, engineered as one assembly.

The math for the GC

• Markup stacking disappears. Low voltage bought through the electrical contractor typically carries their 5–15% on top of the integrator’s number. Direct award keeps that in the project.
• One submittal package, one closeout. Cable test reports, as-builts, panel schedules and O&Ms arrive as one coordinated set — not four formats from four offices.
• One schedule entry. Rough-in and trim sequence internally; your super chases one foreman instead of four.
• One insurance and licensing file. In Utah, the Division 28 alarm work has to ride on a state burglar-alarm company license (ours is #14207727‑6501) — awarding it separately means verifying that twice.

When going through the electrical contractor still makes sense

Honesty over salesmanship: consolidation isn’t always right. If the low-voltage scope is tiny — a handful of drops in a small TI — folding it into the EC’s contract is simpler than adding a sub. If the EC has an in-house low-voltage division that has performed for you, that relationship has value. And on some public work, the prime-sub structure is dictated before bids open. The consolidation case gets stronger as scope grows: once a project carries a rack room, door hardware integration and a camera count in the dozens, the seams between separate subs start costing more than any markup ever did.

What one roof looks like on your project

• Division 27: Cat6/6A horizontal, fiber backbone, racks and pathways, labeled and certified with test reports at closeout
• Division 28: access control roughed in before frames are set, surveillance placed from the drawings, monitored intrusion and fire under our Utah license
• The interfaces: owned, drawn and tested by the same crew — which is the actual product

Put us on the bid list

We bid Divisions 27 and 28 together or separately across the Wasatch Front — plan room invitations, drawing sets and walk-throughs all welcome. See how we run commercial new construction, or send us the drawings and we’ll return a real number. We also sub to other integrators when the project calls for local hands.