Updated September 2026 | Commercial | By PowerRoute Electric & Plumbing
Before anyone prices a tenant improvement job, an electrician walks the space. That walkthrough decides most of what ends up in the bid, and it usually happens weeks before a permit application is filed. If you are a general contractor, a tenant, or a property manager sitting in on one for the first time, here is what actually happens and what the electrician is looking for.
A TI walkthrough is not an inspection. Nobody passes or fails. The point is to see what the building already has, compare it against what the new layout needs, and find the gaps that drive cost and schedule.
Who Walks the Space
Most walkthroughs run with three to five people. The general contractor or project manager leads. The electrician attends with a field foreman or estimator. The tenant sends whoever knows how the space will be used day to day, and that person matters more than people expect.
Building engineering or the property manager joins when the work touches the main service, the electrical room, or anything shared between suites. On second-generation space in an occupied building, expect the landlord’s representative there too.
Bring the drawings you have, even if they are rough. A marked-up floor plan with furniture and equipment locations beats a finished set with no context.
The First Thing the Electrician Checks
Service capacity. Everything else follows from it.
The electrician finds the suite panel, reads the main breaker rating, counts open spaces, and looks at how the suite is fed from the building. Then it becomes a question of whether the new layout fits inside what is already there.
An office replacing an office rarely moves the needle. A commercial kitchen, a medical suite with imaging, a fitness tenant, or anything with rooftop equipment can exceed the existing service. When it does, the conversation moves to the utility, and utility coordination is often the longest lead item on a Los Angeles tenant improvement project.
Expect questions about how the building meters its tenants. In multi-tenant buildings, whether the suite has its own meter or sits behind a house meter changes both the scope and who pays for what.
Existing Conditions That Change the Scope
Older Los Angeles commercial stock hides surprises above the ceiling. Expect the electrician to pop ceiling tiles and look.
Common finds:
- Abandoned conduit and dead circuits from previous tenants that nobody documented
- Junction boxes buried above hard lid ceilings
- Wiring methods that no longer match current code, particularly in buildings reworked several times
- Circuits from one suite crossing into another
- Panel schedules that do not match what is actually energized
None of this is unusual. It matters because undocumented existing conditions are what turn into change orders later. A walkthrough that spends an hour above the ceiling is doing you a favor.
Lighting and Title 24
California energy code applies to most tenant improvements, and lighting is where it shows up first. The electrician will note what fixtures are in place, whether they are LED, and what controls exist.
Expect questions about occupancy sensors, daylight zones near windows, and how the space is switched. When the design comes from an architect, the lighting controls narrative needs to line up with what the electrician will install and what the inspector will want demonstrated at final.
If existing fixtures stay, the electrician will want to know whether the circuits and controls serving them are being reused or replaced. That distinction changes both the permit path and the field work.
What Your Layout Tells the Electrician
This is where the tenant earns a seat at the walk. Describe how you will actually use the space.
Useful detail includes workstation counts, where printers and copiers land, whether you are running a server closet or a wall-mounted rack, appliance loads in break rooms, specialty equipment on dedicated circuits, and anything that plugs into 208 or 240 volts. Conference room AV and floor boxes come up constantly, and floor boxes in a slab are far easier to plan than to add later.
Low voltage coordination gets discussed here too. Data cabling is often a separate vendor, but the pathways, backboards, and power at the rack have to be planned together.
Questions You Should Be Ready to Answer
The walkthrough moves faster when you can answer these on the spot:
- What is the target date for occupancy
- Is the building occupied, and are there restrictions on noisy or hot work during business hours
- Who is handling the permit, and is the design complete enough to submit
- Is the ceiling coming down, or are you working above an existing grid
- What equipment is the tenant bringing, and can you share the nameplate data
- Who owns the panel serving the suite, and who holds access to the electrical room
“We do not know yet” is a fine answer. It gets written down as an assumption, which is better than a guess buried inside a number.
What You Get Afterward
Within a few days of a walkthrough you should expect a scope narrative, not just a price. A useful one names what is included, what is excluded, what is assumed about existing conditions, and what still needs an answer.
That last part is the RFI list, and it is the most valuable thing to come out of the walk. It tells you which decisions are holding up the schedule. Long lead items, switchgear, utility coordination, and anything requiring a service upgrade belong in their own line rather than buried in general work.
If a bid comes back as a single lump number with no assumptions, you have no way to compare it against anyone else’s.
How Long the Walkthrough Takes
A single suite under 5,000 square feet usually takes 45 to 90 minutes. Multi-floor space, occupied buildings, and anything involving the main service take longer, and sometimes need a second visit with building engineering to open the electrical room.
Expect photos. A thorough electrician leaves with dozens, and those photos are what the estimator works from.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. A rough layout is enough to start. Finished drawings make the pricing tighter, but the walkthrough itself is about existing conditions, and those are the same either way.
Sometimes. A quick read on the panel gives a rough answer. A firm answer needs a load calculation against your actual equipment list, which happens after the walk.
If the work touches the main service, shared electrical rooms, the roof, or anything outside your demised space, yes. Most leases also require landlord approval for alterations, so check before the walk.
Utility coordination on service upgrades and incomplete design at permit submittal are the two that come up most often. Both are easier to manage when they surface at the walkthrough instead of during construction.
A good walkthrough turns unknowns into a written list before anyone commits to a schedule. If you have a Los Angeles space going through a buildout, our commercial tenant improvement electrician page covers how we scope and run TI electrical work, and our commercial electrician in Los Angeles page covers service upgrades and switchgear when the walk turns up a capacity problem.
Walking a TI Space in Los Angeles?
Send us the floor plan and the tenant equipment list. We will walk the suite, check the service, and come back with a scope narrative and an RFI list, not just a number.
