How to choose an AV company you can trust
A trustworthy AV supplier is identifiable before you sign anything — from what they ask you, what their quote itemises, and what they tell you they cannot do. What to ask for, what a good answer sounds like, and the warning signs worth walking away from.
The short answer
Judge an AV company on what they ask you, not on what they show you. A supplier you can trust wants the running order before they quote, names the crew who will actually be in the room, itemises the kit line by line, and tells you plainly what they cannot do. Showreels, client logos and a single round number on a quote are the things that tell you least.
Everything below is how to apply that in the four places it is testable: the questions they ask, the quote they send, the references you take, and the things that should make you stop.
What should they ask you?
The questions a supplier asks before quoting are the clearest signal available, and they cost you nothing to observe. A supplier who asks nothing has decided what your event is.
The running order
Not the theme and not the headcount — the actual sequence of the day with durations. A supplier quoting without it is quoting a room rather than an event, and the difference turns up later as a variation on the invoice.
What the room has to do
Presentations, a panel, a video, an awards moment, a live stream, a recording. Each of those is a different rig. A quote that covers all of them without asking is either padded or short, and you cannot tell which.
How the speakers present
Lectern or roaming, own laptop or a supplied machine, remote joiners. The connection between a speaker's own laptop and the room is where an unreasonable share of technical problems live, and it costs nothing to settle it weeks out.
The get-in and the get-out
Times, access, lift dimensions, whether the room is in use the night before. A supplier who has not asked has not costed the overnight, and somebody is going to pay for it.
What happens when something fails
Ask them directly, and listen for whether the answer is already there. Spare mics, a second playback machine, a plan for the projector. A supplier who has thought about failure has been doing this a while.
What you should not buy
A good supplier will tell you the video wall is not worth it in a room that size, or that the third camera is a cost with no picture behind it. One who never talks you out of anything is selling rather than advising.
What should the quote show?
A quote is a specification with a price on the end. If you cannot rebuild the rig from it, it is not a quote — and you certainly cannot compare it with another one.
Kit, line by line
Every item with a quantity. "Full AV package" is a number with a story attached: you cannot compare it, and you cannot see what was quietly removed when the price came down.
Crew by position and shift
Positions, hours for each, and the overtime rate in writing. The overtime rate is the number that decides how the last hour of a late-running day feels for everyone.
Transport, rigging and power
Vehicle, crew for the get-in, and the power the rig actually draws. Power is the classic omission, and it becomes a venue problem at 06:00 rather than a paperwork problem in advance.
Owned versus cross-hired
Ask which items are cross-hired. It is not a problem — everybody cross-hires — but it tells you what will arrive on the day untested by the people operating it.
Spares
What is duplicated, specifically. A supplier who carries a spare of the thing that fails most is worth more than one who carries a better version of the thing that never does.
Exclusions
The exclusions list is the most informative part of any AV quote, and the shortest one in the pile is usually the least honest.
How do you check them?
References are worth taking, but the usual question is the wrong one. "Were you happy with them?" gets you a yes from almost everybody.
Ask instead what went wrong on the job and what the supplier did about it. Every event has something. A reference who cannot name a single thing either was not there or is being careful, and either way you have learned something. A reference who describes a genuine failure and then describes a calm fix has told you exactly what you needed to know.
Ask to speak to the crew chief before you book, not the salesperson. The person who writes the quote is rarely the person on comms at 06:40, and it is the second one whose judgement you are buying.
Ask what they have done in your venue. Venues have quirks — rigging points, load-in routes, three-phase power in the wrong corner, a lift that will not take a flight case standing up — and a supplier who has worked there has already paid for that knowledge on somebody else's event.
You are not buying equipment. Equipment is available to everyone. You are buying the judgement of the person standing next to it when something stops working.
What are the warning signs?
None of these is proof of anything on its own. Two of them together is a conversation worth having before you sign.
One number and no breakdown
A single figure for a full package cannot be compared, cannot be checked and cannot be reduced honestly. When the price comes down, something came out, and you will not know what until the day.
The crew are decided on the day
A supplier who cannot tell you who will operate your event is telling you they do not know yet. Weeks out, that is ordinary scheduling. A week out, it is not.
No site visit and no technical call
On anything more complicated than a single lectern, a supplier who has neither walked the room nor asked for a technical call is planning to solve it on the day, using your event as the rehearsal.
No risk assessment or insurance certificate
A risk assessment, a method statement and a public liability certificate are ordinary documents every working supplier already holds. Being slow to produce them is a signal about how the rest of the paperwork will go.
Everything is possible
A supplier who agrees to every late change without ever describing the consequence is not being helpful. The consequence still exists. You will simply meet it later, on the day, in front of a room.
The quote sells outcomes rather than kit
"Immersive experience" is not a specification. You cannot rig it, you cannot compare it, and on the day you cannot tell whether it arrived.
How EventBlok approaches this
EventBlok is software, not an AV company, and it neither rates suppliers nor keeps a directory of them. This section is only about the part of the relationship software touches: what the supplier is reading.
A lot of the friction between an organiser and an AV crew is a version problem rather than a competence problem. The supplier quoted from a running order that has changed twice since, and the copy they are working from is the one they were emailed.
In EventBlok the showflow is a deeper view of the published programme rather than a separate document, and department views for GFX, LX, A/V, FOH and stage are filters on that one record. A supplier reading the A/V view is reading the same running order the organiser is editing, and every view prints with its version and timestamp on it. If you work with the same suppliers across several events, production agencies covers how roles decide who sees which account.
The related reading is what event production software should connect and how a change reaches every screen.
A hybrid studio build — the kind of job where a supplier's process is visible long before doors
Nicolae Ciobota
Founder, EventBlok. Live, hybrid and broadcast producer, showcaller and technical director, in production since 1996.
Common questions
An AV company supplies and operates equipment: sound, lighting, screens, cameras. A production company takes responsibility for the show itself — the running order, the creative, the crew, the rehearsal — and usually buys AV as one of its inputs. Plenty of firms do both, so ask which they are being on your event, and who is calling the show.
Sometimes. An in-house crew knows the room, the rigging points and the power, which is worth real money. Against that, in-house pricing is often not competitive and the kit is whatever the venue bought. Check first whether your contract even permits an external supplier, because some venues do not.
Kit listed line by line with quantities, crew by position with hours and an overtime rate, transport and rigging, the power required, which items are cross-hired, what spares are carried, and an explicit exclusions list. A single figure for a full package cannot be compared with anything and hides what gets removed when the price comes down.
As soon as the date, the venue and the shape of the day are fixed. The constraint is rarely the equipment. It is crew availability in a busy season and, for anything needing rigging, the venue's own schedule. Booking late usually means a smaller choice of supplier and a worse rate rather than no supplier at all.
Ask who will be in the room on the day and whether you can speak to them. Ask what went wrong on their last comparable event and what they did about it. Ask what they carry as spares. Ask what they would talk you out of. Then ask what is excluded from the quote, and read the answer twice.
Ask for a public liability certificate, a risk assessment and a method statement for your event, plus evidence of competence for anything worked at height. These are documents a working supplier produces routinely, and a slow or reluctant answer is itself the answer.
MORE FROM THE JOURNAL
- GUIDE
What is a showflow? A practical guide to the live-event running order
A showflow is the cue-level running order a production crew calls a live event from. This is what belongs in o…
- GUIDE
How to write a run of show for a live event
A run of show is the minute-by-minute document the production team delivers from. Here is the structure that w…
- GUIDE
Event agenda vs showflow vs run sheet: what each document is actually for
These three documents describe the same event to three different audiences, and confusing them is why events e…