We have watched this happen on both sides of the border: the building is finished, the line is bolted down, and the project stops for weeks because an inspector will not sign off on a panel built overseas.
The timing is what makes it expensive.
A field evaluation is site-specific and one-time. It labels that machine, in that location, which means it cannot be cleared at the factory before shipping. It has to happen after installation.
So the discovery always arrives at the worst possible moment — after the money is spent, after the building is done, and with a production date already promised to someone.
Equipment approval pre-check
Answer four questions about one item. Runs entirely in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere, nothing is stored.
This is a planning aid, not a code ruling. Acceptance always rests with the Authority Having Jurisdiction for your site. Based on NEC 110.3(B) and 110.3(C), and field evaluation practice under NFPA 790 / NFPA 791.
What the full review gives you
Send us the equipment list and we come back in writing, item by item:
1 · Approval path per item
Listed and fine, needs a field evaluation, or needs a conversation with the AHJ before it ships. No blanket answers.
2 · What to demand from the vendor
The documents that make a field evaluation fast instead of slow — schematics, component listings, bills of material — and which are cheap to get now and impossible to get later.
3 · 50 Hz exposure
Which machines genuinely need re-specifying for 60 Hz, which can be driven, and which will quietly run 20% fast and damage your process.
4 · Where it hits the schedule
The items that will sit between mechanical completion and start-up, so you can start them during fabrication instead of discovering them at commissioning.
The best time to run this is before the purchase order. The second best is before the container sails. After the equipment lands, your options narrow to whatever the AHJ will accept.
What it is not
We are a contractor, not a certification body. To be precise about what you are getting:
- Not a certification, a listing, or a field evaluation — those are issued by an NRTL
- Not a legal opinion, and not binding on any Authority Having Jurisdiction
- Not a quotation, and not conditional on you hiring us
Why we do it for free. Because the projects that go badly are the ones where nobody asked this question early, and we would rather meet you at the purchase order than at the commissioning crisis. If you then want someone to build the plant, you will know what we are like to work with.
Who it is for
- Manufacturers reshoring or expanding into the United States with a production line specified, bought or built outside North America.
- Chinese and European parent companies setting up a first US plant, where the engineering is already done to a home-market standard.
- Corporate engineering and capital-project teams who have been handed a US date and need to know what is actually between them and it.
Who does it
CTECP is a design-build / EPC general contractor founded in Mexico in 2016, working in the United States through CTECP INC — Houston and Dallas, Texas, and Greenville, South Carolina.
What we are built for is the crossing itself — taking an engineering package and an equipment list produced in China or Europe and getting them through US code acceptance, with licensed US subcontractors, in English · Español · 中文.