There’s one consultant hire that almost every not-for-profit capital project makes too late. It’s not the architect. It’s not the cost estimator. It’s the low voltage master planner.
Picture a senior living community two weeks before move-in. The building is beautiful. The finishes are exactly what the interior designer specified. The mechanical systems have been commissioned. The punch list is 90% closed.
And the nurse call technician is in the ceiling, pulling additional conduit that wasn’t planned for, through finished spaces, because the system specified twelve months ago doesn’t communicate with the building automation platform selected eight months ago.
The rework is expensive. The delay to move-in is worse. And the root cause is entirely preventable: nobody owned the full technology systems program from the beginning.
The low voltage master planner takes ownership of your entire technology infrastructure, from network backbone to nurse call to security to AV in every common space, and ensures it is designed comprehensively, specified clearly, coordinated with the construction documents, and procured with appropriate competitive pressure.
Without this person engaged at schematic design, here’s what typically happens: each technology system gets specified by a different vendor with a financial interest in the outcome. Systems that must communicate with each other get specified independently with no integration roadmap. The owner arrives at occupancy with systems that work in isolation, don’t integrate, and will require partial replacement within a decade.
In senior living, nurse call, emergency response, and memory care safety systems are life-safety infrastructure. Getting them wrong has consequences that go well beyond project cost.
The fee for a a low voltage master planner who knows every system in your building pays for itself many times over in avoided rework.
Pandion’s process involves Low Voltage Master Planning from day one. Call us.
