Nightshift is a commercial and industrial electrical contractor in Draymoor. We isolate, strip out and replace switchgear across a weekend and hand the plant back running. Since 2004 we have run 214 shutdowns and handed one back late, in 2011, by 40 minutes.
Talk to the shutdown desk
(555) 014-2400Lic. #000000
Master electrical contractor (sample)
$10m
Public liability and contract works
2004
Wiring plant in the Draymoor belt since
4 to 12
Electricians on a shutdown crew
90 min
To site on a breakdown, any hour
Before anyone talks about a shutdown, it is worth knowing which half of the job actually needs one. Most plants are quoted for a weekend they did not need.
Done in normal hours, around your people, with nothing switched off upstream.
These need a window. The argument is never whether, only how long and how it rolls back.
When the window is too short for the work, we buy time instead of asking for more of yours: a hire generator, a temporary board, or taking the plant back line by line so the slowest one to warm up starts first.
Main boards, sub mains, ACBs and MCCBs to 4,000A. Old panel out and new panel in inside one weekend window, busbar chamber included. Obsolete frames sourced rebuilt when a full board cannot be justified.
Sub mains, risers, distribution boards and single to three-phase conversions. SWA and LSF cable to 400mm2, winch pulled with a bond tester on the drum so nothing is dragged over a sharp edge.
MCC cubicles, starters, soft starts and VSDs for conveyors, dryers, presses and pumps to 250kW. Control wiring numbered to your drawing, not to ours, so your fitters can follow it at 3am.
Fixed wire inspection and testing, thermal surveys, torque audits and emergency lighting tests, cut into whatever windows your production plan leaves. Usually Tuesday nights, usually four hours at a time.
On site in 90 minutes, any hour of any day. A meter, a thermal camera and the common spares for your board, because we keep a photograph of every board we have ever opened.
Fixed wire testing at $3.80 a circuit, arc flash studies, load surveys and a remedial list split into must, should and could, so your capital request has real numbers in it.
This is the plan we ran at the Kettleworth board mill last March: the 1988 main board out, a 3,200A board in, between the Friday night hooter and the Monday morning one. Every stage says who is on site, what is dead, what is being changed, and the checkpoint where we either carry on or put you back the way we found you.
Bar height is crew on site, 3 to 12 electricians Go or no-go checkpoint
Friday 18:00 to 20:00
Plant live
Nothing. The mill is still running on the old board.
Friday 20:00: Is line 3 empty and cool?
Go
The dryer is off load, under 60C, and production has signed the permit. We start switching.
No-go
If the dryer is still turning we stand down at 20:00 and rebook. We do not isolate around a running line to save face.
If we stop here: Nothing is disconnected. Standing down here costs you the mobilisation and nothing else, and Monday is untouched.
Your own clock looks different. The walkthrough is where we find out what your window really is, which is usually shorter than the one in the email and longer than the one production will admit to.
What we do not do: fire alarm design, building management programming and high voltage cable jointing. We bring in the same three firms every time and they invoice you direct, so there is no margin of ours sitting on top of their day rate.
Your insurer will ask for most of this. Your production manager will care about the last one on the list.
Every electrician fits their own lock on the point they will work on. The keys go in one box and the shutdown coordinator holds it. Nothing is re-energised while a lock is on it, including by us.
The schedule reaches your duty engineer nine days before the window with a request to argue with it. On the night, one operator switches, one checker watches, and both sets of initials go against every step.
Proving unit checked, point tested, proving unit checked again. Logged with a time at every point. The proving unit itself is checked against a known live source at the start of every shift.
Boundaries calculated per board from the fault level your supply authority gives us. Category rated PPE on the job, and the label is fitted to the door before that door is shut for the last time.
We work to your permit to work if you have one, and to ours if you do not. A copy stays taped inside the board door and a copy goes in the handover pack.
Schedules, certificates, test results, the torque log, thermal images and as-fitted drawings, handed to a named person on site. Not emailed a fortnight later when someone chases it.
Insurance sits at $10m public liability and $10m contract works. The certificates go to your procurement team before we quote, not after somebody asks for them at 4pm on a Friday.
One electrician carries the breakdown phone every night and a second is on 30 minute standby behind him. Between them they reach any of our eight towns inside 90 minutes, and they arrive with a meter, a thermal camera and the common spares for your board, because we keep a photograph of every board we have ever opened.
What we will not do at 3am is guess. You get a written cause and a photograph before we invoice, even when the fix took ten minutes and a fuse.
Breakdown line, 24 hours
(555) 014-2477
Wash-down areas, IP65 on everything, and a hygiene induction before the toolbox leaves the van.
The clock is the temperature, not the hours. We plan around how long the store can coast, then take half of it.
Big drives, dirty supplies and harmonics. We log before we quote so the new board is sized for what you actually draw.
Zoned areas, telemetry that has to keep reporting, and pumps that cannot all be down at once.
Pits, hoists and charging. Work happens between the last vehicle in and the first one out, which is a four hour window.
Dual feeds, changeover panels and a UPS that has to stay in circuit while we move what is behind it.
Half terms, holidays and the two hours after a ward closes. We have done a theatre changeover in a single night, twice.
Long cable runs, heavy motors and weather. Everything gets a mechanical protection review, not just an electrical one.
These are gate to gate at night, measured on the jobs we have run, not lifted off a map. Every one of them is inside the 90 minute breakdown promise.
Further out than Braedon we still come. We just tell you a time when we take the call, instead of promising one before we know where the crew is.
Travel is shown as its own line on every invoice. If a job runs three nights, you pay it three times and you can see exactly what it is.
March 2025. 60 hours, Friday 18:00 to Monday 06:00.
Handed back at 05:20 Monday, 40 minutes early. The mill runs at $9,400 an hour, so the early handback paid for the generator twice over.
August 2024. 14 hours, one Sunday night.
The store ran on a 500kVA generator for eleven hours and rose 1.5C. We had told them to plan for 3C and to move nothing. They moved nothing.
November 2024. Six consecutive Tuesday nights, 22:00 to 05:00.
The dairy never lost a production day. Pasteuriser motor current dropped 14 percent, which is about $11,000 a year at their tariff.
They sent me the switching schedule nine days out and asked me to argue with it. Nobody had ever done that. By Friday night there was nothing left to be surprised about.
Six Tuesday nights instead of one weekend. It cost more on the invoice and it saved us roughly $70,000 in lost production. They worked that out and told us. We had not asked.
Our cold store went up 1.5 degrees over eleven hours on a generator. They had told me to expect three. I have kept that email for the next time a contractor tells me it will be fine.
Two hours on your site when the plant is quiet. We open every board, photograph every point and leave with your single line drawing marked up in pencil. No charge, and you keep the marked-up drawing whether you ever call us again or not.
The hour by hour plan, the crew numbers, the rollback at every stage and a fixed price with the contingency shown as its own line instead of buried in the rate. Then we ask you to pull it apart.
Board, cable, generator, lighting towers, welfare and food. The only things we use on your site are the supply we agreed and the roller door. Your stores stay shut and your fitters stay home.
If yours is not here, call the shutdown desk. It is answered by an electrician, not a call centre.
Often, yes. A motor control centre can be rebuilt a cubicle at a time over consecutive nights, and a sub main can be run in parallel and swapped over in minutes. We did exactly that at the Sedgemount dairy over six Tuesday nights. It costs more in labour and it usually costs less than one lost production day. We will tell you which is cheaper for you before you ask.
In 214 weekend shutdowns since 2004 we have handed back late once, in 2011, by 40 minutes. Every stage of the plan has a written rollback, and the contract carries a late handback penalty of $1,200 an hour payable by us. The penalty exists so that the person quoting has a reason to be honest about the hours.
We switch to 11kV with our own authorised person where your supply authority allows it, and we replace HV switchgear. We do not joint HV cable. That goes to a specialist jointer who invoices you direct, so there is no margin of ours sitting on top of his day rate.
The board is the long item, 10 to 14 weeks from order. Everything else we can mobilise at six weeks. We hold four weekends a quarter open for work that cannot wait, and we do not release those to whoever books first.
Whoever already has a system that works. If you run a permit to work, we work inside it and our coordinator signs on and off like any of your contractors. If you do not, we bring ours and your duty engineer countersigns. Either way there is one key box and one named holder, all weekend.
Yes. Fixed wire testing is $3.80 a circuit, done in whatever windows you have, and you get a remedial list split into must, should and could, with a price against each. Most plants find the must list is shorter than they feared and the should list is where the real money is.
Two hours on your site when the plant is quiet, and you keep the marked-up single line drawing whether you use us or not. Most walkthroughs happen between 18:00 and 22:00 on a weeknight.
(555) 014-2400Shutdown desk, 07:00 to 19:00 weekdays. Breakdowns any hour on (555) 014-2477.