Questions we answer on the phone every week.

No. LA CCTV Supply is not an installing contractor. We sell equipment and provide training, consulting and system design; installation is performed by your licensed contractor. We hold no CSLB contractor’s licence — no C-7 low voltage, no C-10 electrical — and we do not pull permits or sign off on permitted work. The one exception is small non-permitted work under $1,000 all-inclusive, which we can handle directly. On everything larger, we design it, supply it and support your installer through submittals and commissioning.

Yes — that is the normal shape of our projects. Your contractor keeps the licence, the labour and the site safety; we provide the design, the bill of material, the submittal package and the technical answers behind it. In practice that means we attend coordination calls, answer RFIs against our own drawings, confirm that what ships matches what was specified, and stay available through commissioning. We are equally happy working for the owner, for the general contractor, or as the supplier behind an integrator.

Commercial and industrial building owners, property and facility managers, security directors, general contractors, electrical and low-voltage contractors, security integrators, school districts and municipalities, and federal agencies and their prime contractors. The common thread is a facility rather than a household: a warehouse, plant, campus, clinic, command center, data center or government building. Customers usually arrive with one of three things — a parts list to price, a problem to solve, or an existing system they no longer trust.

We are set up for commercial and government work, and our product lines, documentation and support model all assume a facility. We will quote commercial-grade equipment to anyone who wants it, but we do not design residential systems, and we would rather be honest: a single-family home is usually better served by a local alarm company that can install, monitor and service it. If you manage an apartment community, HOA common areas or a mixed-use property, that is commercial work and we are a good fit.

Non-permitted work under $1,000 all-inclusive — equipment plus labour plus everything else in one number. Think swapping a failed camera on an existing mount, replacing a dead power supply, adding a reader to a door that is already wired, or a firmware and password remediation pass on a small recorder. Anything that needs a permit, new conduit, fire-alarm interface or structural work goes to your licensed contractor, and we will help you scope it so the bids you get are comparable.

Roughly ninety manufacturer lines across video, access control, intrusion, intercom, power, enclosures, cable and tooling — including about two dozen lines that manufacture in the United States. We are multi-line and vendor-neutral by design: no single manufacturer owns us and no quota steers a recommendation. If a product we do not stock is genuinely the right answer for your application, we will say so. Ask for the second and third choice on anything we propose; you should always get one.

It depends on the category and the configuration, so we quote lead time next to price rather than guessing. Commonly stocked commercial items often ship within days. Project quantities, factory-configured recorders, custom cable reels and specialty door hardware are usually measured in weeks. Some categories have swung far longer during supply disruptions in recent years. We re-confirm lead times at purchase order, flag anything that has moved, and will propose an equivalent if a long pole threatens your schedule.

Equipment carries the manufacturer’s warranty, and terms vary widely by line — a few years is common, some products carry longer or limited lifetime coverage on specific components. We register and coordinate the RMA for you, supply the failure information the manufacturer wants, and arrange advance replacement where that manufacturer offers it. What a warranty almost never covers is the labour to remove and reinstall the device; since we are not the installing contractor, that portion sits with whoever installed it.

Section 889 of the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act restricts covered telecommunications and video surveillance equipment. Part (a)(1)(A) barred executive agencies from procuring it from August 2019; part (a)(1)(B) barred agencies from contracting with entities that use it from August 2020. The covered entities named in the statute include Huawei, ZTE, Hytera, Hikvision and Dahua, together with their subsidiaries and affiliates, and the FAR implements it at 52.204-24, -25 and -26. If you touch federal money, tell us at quote time and we will source accordingly.

Yes — a substantial number of our lines manufacture in the United States, particularly in power, locking hardware, enclosures, mounts, cable and contacts. Be aware that three different claims get used interchangeably and are not the same thing: the FTC’s “Made in USA” standard (all or virtually all of the product made domestically), Buy American Act domestic content for federal contracts, and Trade Agreements Act designated-country origin. Tell us which one your contract actually requires and we will identify products and documentation that meet it.

Typically: a basis-of-design narrative stating assumptions; floor plans with device locations and mounting heights; a camera study showing field of view and pixels-per-foot at the target plane; a riser or one-line diagram; device, camera and door hardware schedules; a network, PoE and power budget; a bandwidth and storage model with retention math; head-end and IDF layouts; details for the tricky mounts and penetrations; a bill of material; and specification language you can put out to bid. Scope is agreed in writing before we start — some projects need all of it, many need four of those items.

Quoting equipment is free, and so is a sensible amount of application advice that goes with it. Design and consulting are paid professional services, priced to the scope: a camera study for one warehouse is not a multi-building master plan. We will tell you up front which one you are asking for. Because the design is a deliverable you own, you can bid it competitively to installing contractors — and comparable bids usually recover the design fee on their own.

Yes, and it is one of the most useful things we do. On a plan review we check coverage against the stated objective, resolution at the target plane, PoE and storage arithmetic, door hardware against egress and fire-door requirements, pathway and separation assumptions, and whether the specified products actually exist in the configuration shown. On a submittal review we check what is being offered against what was specified, and list the substitutions that change performance rather than just the label.

Yes. Four audiences, four different sessions: operators (how to search, export and preserve video, how to respond to an alarm), facility and security managers (what the system can and cannot do, retention, audit, who holds which key), IT teams (segmentation, credentials, firmware, backup), and low-voltage crews (installation practice, terminations, commissioning and documentation). For secure spaces we also run structured SCIF, SAPF and UL 2050 Extent 3 instruction.

On-site sessions at your facility, live remote sessions, and written reference material your team keeps afterwards. We prefer to train on the system you actually own, using your cameras, your doors and your recorded footage, because generic training evaporates within a month. Public-level material is free and needs no sign-in: the SCIF Answers knowledge base, the Security Education explainers, and the downloadable SCIF briefing set.

No. We are not an accredited certifying body, and we are careful not to imply otherwise. What we provide is instruction and a record of attendance or completion for your training file. Where an industry or manufacturer certification exists and is genuinely useful to your team, we will point you at the body that issues it. Equally, no product is “certified” by attending our training, and nothing we teach substitutes for an approval that only your Authority Having Jurisdiction or Accrediting Official can give.

Yes, and we have for a long time. Our federal history is in low-voltage bid work — security and communications packages for Department of Veterans Affairs facilities, Navy installations and airport projects among others — as a supplier and designer rather than as the installing contractor. We do not publish customer names, contract numbers or award values. Registration status, representations and certifications for any specific solicitation are confirmed in writing at the time we quote it.

Often, depending on the product category, and we will tell you plainly when a category has no compliant option. The Buy American Act and the Trade Agreements Act are different tests — domestic content versus substantial transformation in a designated country — and BAA domestic content thresholds have been stepping up under recent rulemaking. Send us the clause as it appears in your solicitation rather than the shorthand; we will match products and supporting documentation to that clause.

We make no claim to a facility clearance and no claim that our personnel hold security clearances. Everything we publish about SCIFs and SAPFs is public-level information drawn from released documents, and everything we supply is unclassified equipment. Work that requires cleared personnel, classified information or access to an accredited space is performed by your cleared contractor under your sponsor’s direction. If a solicitation requires a clearance we do not hold, we will say so immediately.

Yes. The usual package is a bill of material priced to the drawings, Section 889 representations, domestic-content or designated-country documentation where the clause requires it, a submittal package formatted to the specification, a lead-time schedule tied to your construction sequence, and closeout documents — O&M manuals, as-built device schedules and training records. Installation labour, licensing, bonding and site safety remain with the licensed contractor on the project.

We support SCIF and SAPF projects with training, consulting, design assistance and equipment — and we are precise about the boundary. We do not accredit anything, we do not install, and we do not perform classified work. What we do is help the project team understand ICD 705 and the IC Tech Spec, specify intrusion detection and access control that will survive an inspection, and supply compliant equipment. Start with Understanding SCIF & SAPF Security and the free downloads.

No, because nothing is. There is no such certification for a product, a wall system, a door or an alarm panel. An Accrediting Official accredits a facility, based on its documented construction, testing and procedures — and the IC Tech Spec itself warns that vendor claims a product can be accredited without modification may not be accurate. Treat “ICD 705 certified” on any datasheet as a marketing phrase and go back to the criteria the Tech Spec actually states.

UL 2050 is the National Industrial Security Systems certificate service. For accredited spaces the intrusion detection system is normally installed and serviced at Extent 3 by a UL-listed alarm service company, which issues a certificate covering that specific installation. The certificate attaches to the installed system and its ongoing service, not to a product you can buy — so a panel is never “UL 2050 certified” on its own. Whether your facility needs one is set by its Accrediting Official.

We can help the project team understand and assemble the technical evidence: intrusion detection design and acceptance testing, access control, telecommunications and equipment baselines, door and hardware schedules, and the photographic construction record people always wish they had taken. The Fixed Facility Checklist, the Construction Security Plan and the accreditation itself belong to your government sponsor, your Cognizant Security Authority and your Accrediting Official — and where public documents leave a decision to them, we say so rather than inventing a number.