Coordinating your contractors, leadership, and IT team during a construction project.
If your company has ever built, renovated, or repurposed a building, then chances are you’ve experienced the frustrations we’re about to discuss. The fact of the matter is that buildings rarely open for business with a fully-functioning network. Surrounding this phenomenon is a series of statements from the architects, building owner, general contractor, subcontractors, and equipment vendors, that all add up to “IT isn’t really my responsibility”.
In a certain sense, that’s true. After all, you won’t often find the responsibility for a working IT ecosystem spelled out in the scope of work for any of your contractors. However, we all know that each party in the new building process is in some way complicit in the results you get. Unless your company is itself an accomplished builder (you’re probably not), or you’ve had extensive experience with integrating IT systems into new building infrastructure (you probably haven’t), it would be unfair to place those responsibilities solely on you, the building owner. There has to be a fair, objective approach to this common problem.
Let’s break down the shortfalls in how each party commonly handles their set of IT responsibilities and identify ways to overcome those shortfalls.
The Building Owner
When the owner of a building engages in the construction process, it can be difficult to fully communicate the diverse set of expectations and requirements the they hold for their exciting new structure. As such, there are inherently going to be some aspects of their current building’s systems and capabilities that go unmentioned.
When discussing the new building with architects and engineers, a building owner will often focus on two things. First: the aspects of the current building that they hate. And second: their biggest hopes for what the new structure could represent. What’s missing from the initial design meetings are some of the more boring or less noticeable components of the building. These often include IT infrastructure.
The Fix: Include IT stakeholders early
By engaging with your IT team early and often, your technology professionals can share their biggest frustrations of the current building’s IT systems. This also provides them an opportunity to share their aspirations for what the final IT experience will be like in your new space.
The Architects
Architects and engineers must create a slew of drawings and specifications in order for a building to receive permits, zoning approvals, and receive accurate bids from contractors. Once built, the building will receive heavy scrutiny from fire, health and safety, and other inspectors.
By contrast, the IT portions of a building rarely receive any sort of detailed plans or consideration from architects and engineers. After all, almost no one includes IT equipment in equipment schedules. And unless network cabling intertwines with fire detection systems, inspectors will almost always overlook IT. Although the location of network outlets and switches are vital to any floorplan, building owners almost never approve the costs of having engineers creating drawings for low voltage systems.
The Fix: Discover IT Requirements During Equipment and Bid Selection
It can be difficult know exactly what the network and connectivity requirements of your contractors’ systems will be, until you have accepted their bid. As you and your contractors coordinate to create equipment schedules, it will be the responsibility of your IT team to identify any network-connected equipment. This includes HVAC systems, lighting, audio/visual, access controls, service equipment, exhaust hoods, fire suppression systems, security cameras, etc. The IT team can then create an inventory of how many network lines (“drops”) you will need for each system to become part of the network. If your architect has included any of this contractor equipment on elevation drawings for your building, they can translate those locations onto a hand-drawn markup of your electrical floorplan. They can also add any other network drops for systems from your equipment schedule to this same “low voltage markup” plan, using input from your various subcontractors.
The building owner and general contractor can then easily translate this final tally of low voltage lines into a low voltage bid request.
Pro Tip: Low voltage is often an independent cost
Many building owners are surprised to discover that low-voltage wiring (such as network lines, phone lines, camera systems, and other low-voltage connections) are not included in the construction costs for their building. Why not?
Primarily, it is because all of the steps listed above (review of equipment, vendor system requirements, and the creation of a low voltage bid from electrical floorplan markups) require a lot of coordination between parties, right in the middle of the hectic construction schedule.
Your general contractor (and subcontractors) do not have unlimited time and resources. The initial walkthrough? It often takes place right as bids are written, and architectural drawings are taking shape. Conduit placement and raw network wiring? Smack dab in the middle of rough framing. Network line termination and testing? It takes place when electricians are busiest: during fixture installation and finish work.
Because of this, most builders assume that you will go through a dedicated low voltage contractor in order to provide low voltage for your building project. And this is how you should handle your low voltage requirements. Using this approach, low voltage needs will not compete for the attention of the general electrical contractor, and the low voltage contractor can complete them in parallel with other activities.
The General Contractor
Aside from perhaps the building itself, no party in the construction process depends on other parties as much as your general contractor does. They rely on accurate budgets from the building owner. They rely on realistic drawings, equipment specifications, and schedules from their architect and engineers. And they rely on their various subcontractors to deliver a building within scope, on time, and on budget. Any missed responsibilities or requirements from other parties can impact the timeliness and cost-effectiveness of the entire project.
It’s vital that a general contractor operates off of the most accurate scope of work possible. Once the owner and contractor finalize plans, bids, and schedules, the resulting scope becomes the bedrock for all activities the general contractor undertakes on behalf of the building owner. Your general contractor, when choosing between delivering on their agreed-upon scope and an out-of-scope IT deliverable, will (rightly so) focus on completing in-scope responsibilities.
It’s important to know that very few building bids include any IT or network deliverables. With the immense pressure to win bids based on price, your general contractor isn’t going to add various IT requirements and costs to their bid, and risk losing an opportunity because their bid is, although more complete, also more expensive. Network design is (understandably) not a strength of most general contractors. Because of this, most general contractors leave IT requirements (low-voltage wiring, IT rack space, electrical outlets for IT equipment, etc) out of their bids and subsequent construction costs (in order to maintain an attractive bid price).
By the time building owners realize this fact, they face new, unplanned change orders during late-stage construction, when capital is often scarce. This creates numerous problems for the IT ecosystem, especially if the owners must scale everything up to accommodate a new building.
The Fix: Identify IT Deliverables in the Original Scope
If you were able to engage with your IT team earlier in the building process, you should have a general idea of what the IT-related aspects of the building process are going to be. Will the network room need to have its own electrical subpanel? Include it in the deliverables. Will the building have WiFi and hardwired network outlets? Don’t consider the building to be complete without it, and include it in the deliverables. Will your HVAC system connect to the internet? Plan for the network equipment you require to make it so, and include it in the deliverables. A contractor whose final payment depends on the completion of the IT system’s building requirements will have all the incentive they need to include them in their priorities.
The Electrical Contractor
Not to knock general electricians, but there’s nothing “general” about low-voltage wiring—especially for networks. Even other low-voltage contractors, like fire alarm providers, often aren’t comfortable doing network wiring. This is due to the complexity of twisted-pair connectors, and the difficulty of testing and certifying network outlets and lines without the use of expensive equipment.
This general uneasiness around network wiring causes most parties in a construction effort to act as if low voltage either doesn’t exist, or is somehow the sole responsibility of the building owner. Depending on when this fact comes up in conversation, the general contractor may or may not make the building owner explicitly aware of their role in procuring a low voltage contractor for their own building.
The Fix: Manage Traditional Electrical and Low-Voltage Requirements Separately
The most common issue with low voltage is that the most labor intensive part of the process occurs during the busiest time for general electricians. Most general electricians can’t focus on terminating and testing each network outlet in the entire building while they’re also coordinating fixture work and finish work. Since the general electric contract pays more than low voltage work, you can bet your bottom dollar that your building’s low voltage will take a backseat to fixtures and general electrical deliverables.
For these reasons, it makes the most sense to employ an independent low voltage crew, whose only task is the completion of low voltage requirements throughout the building. This eliminates the overlap between the general electrical and low voltage work, and allows you to use the most qualified crew for each requirement. And since low voltage can’t electrocute you, low voltage technicians also don’t need to be bonded or insured the same way as general electricians. This means they tend to charge a lower hourly rate as well.
Plan early to avoid late-stage costs.
By mapping IT requirements onto existing phases of the construction process, and by integrating key IT deliverables into your building’s definition of a completed project, building owners can avoid late-stage frustrations, unforeseen cost overruns, and the risk of a “finished” building that isn’t fully functional.
