What electrical contractors told us at NECA 2026

"Nothing in Vegas is free. You should always leave when you're up."

That's how I opened my post after day one of the National Electrical Contractors Association convention, held October 4 to 7 at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. Between Nick Saban's opening session and a reception on the ice at T-Mobile Arena, the NECA team put on a remarkable show. But it's the conversations at booth 7622 I keep coming back to.

We had close to 40 of them, with people from more than 30 companies. Here's what we heard.

Everyone has more work than hours

The demand is undeniable. Nearly every contractor we met is busy, and the bottleneck isn't winning work. It's getting through it.

In a market like that, you want to be the GC's preferred sub: the one who makes the job easier, not the one holding it up with another round of markups. So when a clause worries a sub, the instinct is to leave it alone and sign. I understand that instinct. But it's the contract you signed that ends up hurting you, not the one you didn't.

The same clauses came up again and again

Almost every conversation came back to contracts, and to the same handful of clauses:

• pay-when-paid language that ties their money to an owner they've never met
• indemnity that makes them cover problems they didn't cause
• extra work done on a verbal OK that never makes it into a change order
• notice deadlines measured in hours and buried deep in the document
• flow-down clauses that bind them to a prime contract they've never seen
• lien rights they didn't realize they were giving up

Underneath all of it: GC paper they feel they can't negotiate.

A lot of contracts already go through ChatGPT

Several contractors told us they already paste contracts into ChatGPT or use a review tool. It's a reasonable first pass. What they said was missing was a person who'll stand behind the answer, tell them which two changes are worth asking for, and help them ask without losing the job.

What fair looks like

We asked what a review should cost. The answers clustered around a flat fee of a few hundred dollars per contract, agreed upfront, with no hourly meter running. Nobody wanted a retainer just to look at one subcontract.

What we're doing about it

That's the service we built. Send us the contract and an attorney-checked redline comes back, typically within one business day, for a flat fee you know before we start.

We're also writing up each of these clauses in plain English, starting with the ones we heard about most. You'll find them here on our Insights page.

Thank you to the NECA team, and to everyone who stopped by 7622. If we didn't get to finish our conversation, send me a note.