I think you're far better off getting the knowledge and experience in house rather than relying on a contractor. This may be more expensive initially due to needing to train people up but you get so much more value from having the knowledge and experience freely available from that point on. This also not only helps with new installs but with troubleshooting existing installations.
Oli On 8 January 2015 at 22:52, Oliver, Jeff <[email protected]> wrote: > I second Brian's comments here. I have yet to speak with a consultant or > VAR that thinks that I should have in-house expertise to perform this kind > of work. They usually want me to pay them for the privilege. > > -- > > Cheers, > Jeff > > -----Original Message----- > From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto: > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Brian Helman > Sent: January 8, 2015 11:55 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] RFP question > > I hate sweeping statements like "most Universities do not do the Wi-Fi > engineering work in house and usually put the design in the RFP", and I > would have to disagree with it. It has been my experience in working with > this group as well as numerous WiFi vendors that it's a pretty even mix of > using consultants/RFP, free/paid services provided by WiFi vendor, WiFi > vendor/owner partnership or University IT design. Having said that, if > you feel your budget will support using a consultant, go for it. Just be > prepared to babysit them as they go from building to building. > > If you are looking for detailed analysis of building materials, I have yet > to see a consultant to does the proper survey though -- put a set of radios > in a space for a few days and read the logs. Every consultant I've seen > just does a heat-map analysis. That's not going to tell you how the > coverage works when your classrooms/lecture halls are fully populated. > With 11ac, personally I think the design is easier than 11n... because the > signals just aren't going to travel like 11n/2.4GHz, so we're all adding > radios to just about every room .. in general, not going through more than > 1 wall. > > I'll try to hit your survey and am also interested in what others have to > say. > > -Brian > > -----Original Message----- > From: The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Constituent Group Listserv [mailto: > [email protected]] On Behalf Of Jerry Bucklaew > Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2015 12:54 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [WIRELESS-LAN] RFP question > > Colleagues, > > We are starting an initiative to upgrade our Wi-Fi infrastructure. Our > current infrastructure was built in-house incrementally over the past > several years. It is 802.n based and not as dense as we would like so we > are looking at moving to 802.11ac with a significant increase in AP/antenna > density to reduce the number of devices associating with each AP and > improve performance. > > We are currently working on a RFP for hardware and figured we would do > the engineering layout, installation and configuration in-house. We > had a review meeting with a consultant who indicated that most > Universities do not do the Wi-Fi engineering work in house and usually put > the design in the RFP. This has led us to question whether we are > following best practices for design engineering. We suspect that this may > also depend on the size of the institution and the network staff. > > While I’m sure that we could achieve a more optimal initial coverage plan > by hiring someone to do a more detailed analysis of building materials and > RF propagation characteristics, I’m wondering if the additional time and > expense derives a net benefit over doing the design in house. > > So we figured we’d post this to our peers and try to evaluate what the > rest of you have experienced, or are planning. We have developed a short > survey (9 questions) to assess the design approach and a couple other > parameters. It should only take about 5 minutes to fill out, and as always > the more participants, the better the results. > > > You can access this survey at http://vovici.com/wsb.dll/s/8727g57943 > > We would appreciate your participation in the survey. I will leave it up > for a week and then post the results back to the list for all to see. I > will segment them into large schools and small schools as I > suspect there might be a difference there. I can segment it different > ways if people want to see it. > > ********** > Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent > Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/. > -- Oliver Elliott Senior Network Specialist IT Services University of Bristol e: [email protected] t: 0117 39 (41131) ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.
