Three phase and maintenance contracts
Switchgear and distribution, motor control centers, drives and controls, preventive maintenance, infrared scanning and arc flash studies. Bought on capability and response, not on price, by people who will read your pages properly.
Downtime is the only number that matters
A plant engineer is not buying electrical work. They are buying the avoidance of a stopped line. If a production line is down, the cost of the hour dwarfs the cost of the repair by an order of magnitude, and nobody in that building is thinking about your hourly rate.
That reframes everything. Response time matters more than price. Familiarity with the specific equipment matters more than general competence. Whether you can work around a production schedule, or during a planned shutdown, matters more than either.
That you have been inside a building like theirs before. Not that you are qualified in the abstract. Equipment types, plant environments, shutdown work and emergency response are the four things a plant engineer scans for, and most contractor sites mention none of them.
The other consequence is that the relationship is worth far more than the first job. Industrial contractors who do well are the ones who convert a callout into a preventive maintenance agreement, and that conversion starts with looking like a company that runs maintenance programs rather than one that fixes things when they break.
Nobody with a stopped line is comparing hourly rates. They are looking for whoever can get here.
In house, technical, and the person who will read your capability page properly. Buys on equipment familiarity and response.
Owns the preventive schedule and the budget for it. The route to a recurring contract rather than a callout.
Signs off on anything large. Cares about downtime, safety record and whether the last vendor caused problems.
The equipment has to be named
Industrial search is unusual in that the terms are technical and the searcher is technical. This is one of the few places in this trade where trade vocabulary belongs in the page title rather than the credibility copy.
| WHAT THEY SEARCH | WHAT IT LEADS TO |
|---|---|
| Switchgear maintenance | Scheduled shutdown work and often a maintenance agreement |
| Motor control center repair | Urgent, high value, and usually a first job in a long relationship |
| VFD troubleshooting | Drives and controls work, frequently recurring |
| Arc flash study | A compliance driven project that opens the door to everything else |
| Infrared scanning | An annual service, the classic entry point to preventive maintenance |
| Three phase power quality | Investigation work that tends to surface larger problems |
| Plant shutdown electrical | Planned, scheduled months ahead, extremely high value |
LOW VOLUME ON EVERY ONE OF THESE. VERY HIGH INTENT ON EVERY ONE OF THESE. ALMOST NO COMPETITION ON MOST OF THEM.
Everywhere else we argue that pages should be titled in the customer language rather than the trade language. Industrial is the exception, because here the customer is a tradesperson too. A plant engineer searches motor control center, not electrical box.
What an industrial section contains
Switchgear and distribution, motor control centers, drives and controls, transformers. Each one named, each one describing what you actually do to it and in what circumstances.
Preventive maintenance, infrared scanning schedules and arc flash study cycles. Written as a program rather than a service, because that is how the budget for it exists.
Stated plainly. Hours, after hours rotation, typical response time, and how a call at two in the morning actually reaches a person. This is the thing plant engineers look for first.
Food processing, warehousing, light manufacturing, water treatment. Naming the environments you have worked in does more than any list of certifications.
Where you have one worth stating. Plants prequalify on safety and a poor record ends the conversation before capability is discussed.
Whether you take planned shutdowns and how far ahead you book them. It is the highest value scheduled work available and very few contractor sites mention it.
Search is the smallest lever here
We would rather say this on the page than discover it with you in month four. Industrial work is won on relationships, on response and on having done it before. Search supports that. It does not replace it.
- Search will not generate a stream of cold industrial leads, and any agency promising that has not worked in this sector
- Search will make sure the referral that already exists survives being checked
- Search will win the small number of specific capability terms nobody else has bothered to target
- Search will make an arc flash study or an infrared scanning inquiry findable, and those are the doors into maintenance contracts
- For a contractor who is purely industrial with an established client list, a smaller program is usually the honest recommendation
Most industrial contractors we work with have a mixed book: some commercial, some industrial, occasionally residential from the early years. The program usually earns its keep on the commercial and residential side while the industrial pages do the quieter job of making the firm look like what it is.
Industrial questions
Is search worth anything for industrial electrical work? 01
Less directly than in residential, and more than most industrial contractors assume. Very little industrial work starts with a cold search. Almost all of it involves someone checking you out at some point in the process, and a facilities manager who cannot tell from your site whether you have worked on a motor control center will assume you have not.
What terms do industrial buyers actually search? 02
Capability terms and problem terms rather than service terms. Motor control center repair, arc flash study, infrared scanning, VFD troubleshooting, switchgear maintenance, and increasingly the equipment manufacturer name plus a service word. Volume on each is small. Intent on each is close to absolute.
How do maintenance contracts change the picture? 03
They change what you are optimizing for. A single repair job is transactional. A preventive maintenance agreement is recurring revenue over years, and it usually starts with a plant engineer looking for someone who can do infrared scanning or an arc flash study. Those two searches are worth targeting specifically because they are the entry point to the larger relationship.
Should industrial and commercial live on the same page? 04
No. The buyers overlap but the evaluation does not. A general contractor pricing a tenant improvement wants schedule and coordination. A plant engineer wants to know whether you can work around production, whether you understand their equipment, and whether you can be there at two in the morning when a line goes down.
Where to go next
Look like a firm that runs maintenance programs
A free written analysis of how your site reads to a plant engineer, including an honest answer about whether search is worth much to you at all.