While not wanting to sound like I’m flogging a dead horse, having the right people with the right expertise and experience can be invaluable, and sometimes that means independent advice.

Take this photo for example.

Blind Freddy can see after the fact this is all kinds of wrong but this was signed off by both Cisco and APC as being their recommended solution, While each of their recommendations  might be good in isoltaion, it’s obviously not what the customer wanted.

Now an integrator or vendor doing all the fine detail might pickup this sort of mistake but as customers push for fixed price solutions, the attention to detail goes out the window. As a client you could double check everything but isn’t that what you’re paying someone else for in the first place?

So yes mistakes will happen, but by making sure you have the right people onboard, people that have already seen all the hidden gotchas and little details, you can save yourself a lot more time and money than the initial outlay will ever be.

– Luke