For the ground, I think you only needed to connect the ground wire to the box, since it's metal. I think the NEC allows that but they don't allow the EMT conduit to be used as a ground though; soemthing else has to have the ground connected to it. I love big switch boards like this.
I ran a ground throughout the entire kit and caboodle as well. But all of the switches had to be grounded so I made jumpers to go from one switch to the next.
So you know, the entire project ran in the neighborhood of $1800-$2000 total cost of materials. I had a licensed and certified electrician do the hookup to the main panel and inspect my work.
Wow. Yeah that's when grounded the boxes instead of each switch and receptacle comes in handy, save on wire. Some states might require each individual device to be grounded independantly of the box though. I'm not sure about here since they used all plasic when they wired my house. I prefer metal boxes.
The rule of thumb is this. If a steel box has a device in it then the box must be grounded. If however, the box is used simply as a junction box, no pigtail is needed.
Yeah i've noticed that junction boxes with no devices aren't grounded but in theory it's electrically grounded if EMT conduit is used since at some point down the line thre has to be a device that is grounded. It doesn't count as being grounded in the books though. When there's no ground wire I use the neutral as the ground wire. Better than nothing i suppose but not necessarily code-compliant. the ground and neutral are bonded in the breaker panel though.