How many of you here giving advice have ever piped a house?
I did two or three for the state here. For some reason they wanted conduit up to Chicago's standards.
First we drilled a million holes. Then we bent up piles of stub 90s cut for switches and receptacles. While one guy was bugging boxes on to one end of the conduits, the other was in the attic running pipe everywhere in a willi-nilli fashion. I thought it looked awful, but no one would see it when we were done. Oh, we also had to cut piles of 30 inch stubs as that is the ideal length for getting them into the studs.
Once the raceways and boxes were done, we installed the wire. Eighty percent we just pushed in, the rest were easy hand pulls. For some reason, we used all solid wire. That was a real pain on the house we did in the dead of winter with no heat.
Then install the devices, and that's about it.
There will be some places where it's nearly impossible, or actually impossible, to run the pipe not exposed. When that happened we just kept close to the surface and then the carpenters covered them. Houses in Chicago are actually built a little different than they are here in Michigan in order to make the installation of the conduit easier.
Compared to roping (romex) houses, piping them is tedium and a real PITA (There's a quote you can use for your white paper). Think about the part about the 30 inch pieces of conduit. EVERY horizontal wall run is installed 30 inches at a time. And that's not the fun part. EVERY horizontal under floor run is installed 30 inches at a time. Think about how much fun that is with just a ladder. Even with the right stuff, like a Baker's scaffold, you are still doing it thirty inches at a time.
Getting the stub 90s in the wall/ceiling transition is a real joy. If the holes are off or crooked you are screwed and have to actually bend the pipe to make it hit the box. That's not allowed. The idea is to have the pipe land directly into the hole in the box without bending it. Then you clip the conduit to the studs. Yes, clip. I don't know what they are called, but part of this evil scheme is to use the clips that stand the pipe off the stud just the right distance to hit the hole in the box, which has a push in conduit connector it.
So, in the perfect world, you would grab your pre-bent 90 and slide a box on it. The boxes would have the connectors already installed by indentured apprentii. You would push a couple clips on the studs then you roll the 90 from the wall up into the ceiling and clip the box on while sliding the conduit onto the stud clips. The only difference between receptacle runs and switch runs is the length of the pipe. The entire process, if done by someone with a bit of experience, literally only takes a few seconds.
If the hole is drilled wrong, it can take ten times as long.
I could go on and on about this, as there are some real good things about it as well. I don't think I would do it on my own house, so I guess that gives you an honest opinion as to what I think about the practice.
