Page 11 - Campus Technology, October/November 2018

AV SMARTS
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CAMPUS TECHNOLOGY | October/November 2018
The nature of our jobs is relatively cyclical — for me, those cycles occur in roughly 14- to 18-month intervals. That gives you some idea of what is going to happen each year — allowing you to plan and budget accordingly. At peak times — the budgeting period for next fiscal year, the end of the current fiscal year, the start of the semester, installations over summer and holiday breaks — a hired consultant can truly shine. Here are three ways a consultant can be a big help as you deploy new technology, manage the technology, keep projects flowing and keep users happy.
1) Keeping Contracts and Costs in Line
Toward the end of the fiscal year and the budgeting period for the next year, technology managers often experience a near constant barrage of quote requests as departments look to shift their remaining funds into small equipment and unload it into AV installs. There are a number of basic ways a consultant can help you as this period approaches.
First, your consultant can help you create a standard “scope of work” (SoW) template that encapsulates the work you need to have quoted, which can be modified for the requirements of a particular room. The majority of the SoW “boilerplate” remains the same from room to room; the only things that change are the equipment list and the specifics of the design. At that point, the SoW becomes a contract document between the school and the AV integrator, so having a consultant write it and the school’s pro- curement department approve it is important.
The consultant can also create an opinion of probable cost (OPC), which saves you the time of having to get bids from multiple integrators, doing all that work upfront and frequently wasting everyone’s time as the project never moves forward. Having an OPC from a third party is also helpful due to the fact that it wasn’t created by your internal staff. In some users’ eyes, that carries more weight.
Lastly, a consultant can be a second pair of eyes in reviewing the quotes you’ve
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