Buildouts
New installs and rebuilds
New construction, a tenant fit-out, a move, or a network that grew one device at a time until nobody could explain it any more. Same process either way.
What drives the price
Buildings decide the number, not device count
Two offices the same square footage can differ by a factor of three, and it's almost always the building rather than the equipment list.
- Cable paths
- Drop ceiling and conduit is quick. Solid plaster, no conduit, or a slab between floors is not.
- Ceiling height
- Warehouse and gym ceilings need lifts and different mounting, and that shows up in labour.
- Occupancy
- Working around an operating business means evenings and weekends, or working in phases.
- Closet condition
- If there's no ventilation, no power, or no rack, that's part of the job now.
- Distance
- Anything past 100 metres of copper means fiber, which means different terminations and a different price.
- What's already there
- Reusable cable is a real saving. Cat5e that tests badly is not worth keeping.
This is why we walk the building before quoting. Anyone who prices a cabling job over the phone is guessing, and the guess is usually wrong in whichever direction suits them.
How it runs
Six steps, in this order, every time
Same sequence on a four-drop office and a forty-AP warehouse. Only the durations change.
- 01
Walkthrough
Half a day, usually
We come look at the building. Where can cable physically run, what's the ceiling made of, how much room is in the closet, where does the internet come in, and what is the Wi-Fi going to have to get through. Photos of everything. This is also where we find the things that drive cost — asbestos-era plaster, no conduit, a closet with no ventilation.
- 02
Scope and price
Three to five days after
You get a diagram, an addressing plan, a drop schedule, and a list of hardware with model numbers and quantities. Also a short section on what we left out on purpose and what it would cost to add later. The price is fixed. If the walkthrough missed something, you hear about it before work starts.
- 03
Cable
Depends on drop count
Pulled, terminated, tested, labeled. If you're operating while we work, we schedule around your hours. Certification results get filed per drop and handed over at the end, so if a link negotiates at 100 Mbps in three years you can prove the cable was good when it went in.
- 04
Configure on the bench
While cabling happens
Hardware is set up and tested before it goes near your building. Addressing, firewall rules, wireless profiles, all of it built and checked somewhere that isn't a live closet at nine at night. Problems found here cost an afternoon. Found during cutover, they cost your Monday.
- 05
Install and cut over
A window you pick
Racking, mounting, and the switchover. After hours or on a weekend if that's what it takes. We stay until the things your business actually stops without are confirmed working — internet, printing, phones, whatever those are for you.
- 06
Hand it over
Within a week
Diagrams, addressing, cable schedule, device list with serials, credentials into whatever password manager you use. Then we walk whoever needs to understand it through the whole thing. If you hire someone else later, they can pick it up cold.
Hardware
Bring your own brand, or don’t
We install Ubiquiti, Cisco, Meraki, Aruba, Fortinet, SonicWall, pfSense, OPNsense, and most things adjacent to them. If your IT policy specifies a vendor, that’s what goes in. If your insurer or a franchise agreement requires one, same.
With no preference on your side, we’ll pick for the building and tell you why. Usually it comes down to what the circuit demands, how much you want to spend on licensing over the next five years, and who’s going to administer it after we hand it over.
We don’t take vendor kickbacks, and we’ll happily quote two options side by side if you want to see the difference.
What you get at the end
- As-built diagram of what actually went in
- Addressing plan: subnets, VLANs, DHCP scopes, reservations
- Cable schedule mapping panel and port to room
- Device list with model, serial, location, and firmware
- Credentials, into your password manager
- Circuit details: provider, account, support line, contracted speed
Tell us about the building
Square footage, roughly how many people, and whether there's anything in there now.