September 1, 2023 | Sam Scott

Bringing a commercial audiovisual system from conception to reality is no simple task. It requires the careful orchestration of various technical, logistical and human components to arrive at a system that users genuinely want to use and that benefits their organization.

Despite the rapid advancement of AV installation trends and technology, I have found that the most common AV project hazards are evergreen. Across industries, these issues routinely prevent worthwhile AV initiatives from seeing the light of day — or worse, they cause massive amounts of money to be spent on systems and equipment that create more problems than they solve for users and businesses alike.

Here are the ten most common commercial AV system pitfalls and how you can avoid them. These pitfalls are organized by the four key stages of an AV installation project: planning, design, procurement and execution.

Planning Issues

1) You Can’t Get Your Company To Approve Funding For An AV Project

2) Too Much Bleeding Edge Technology

Design Issues

3) The User Experience (UX) Is Too Complex

4) The System Is Not Future-Proof

Procurement Issues

5) You’ve Failed To Attract Bidders

6) The Bids Are Not What You Expected

Execution Issues

7) Your Contractor Is Demanding Extra Fees During Construction

8) The Delivered AV System Is Not What You Imagined

9) Problems Appear After The Contractor Is Finished

10) The System Is Hard to Fix

Planning Issues

You have an excellent idea for an AV initiative at your organization, but you’re having trouble getting any sort of traction for the project. What can you do?

Give some definition to your idea. I recommend creating a one page project plan either as a memo or short presentation deck. At this stage, the essential business-focused details of an internal AV project proposal can be articulated in a brief, digestible document:

• What is the goal of the project?

• What is the benefit to the business?

• What are the expectations of the schedule?

• What are the major milestones?

• How much might it cost?

• Who are the key stakeholders?

Now, you might not be able to answer all of these questions just yet, and that’s OK. Once you’ve created your document, bring it to the appropriate decision-makers and assess their reaction. You will likely get a sense of what other information would be required for approval. If not, ask!

When an AV system is in the conceptual stage, it can be difficult to know how to balance new technology with reliable operation and basic functionality.

Exposure to AV marketing campaigns and our desire to be on the cutting edge of new technology is a potent combination. In online videos and demos, complex technology is often shown operating seamlessly, but the reality is not so simple. It’s critical to understand the tendencies and needs of the organization — and the users within the organization — before deciding to acquire a flashy innovation.

The truth is that bleeding-edge technology can be expensive and unreliable. And while it’s OK to employ it when it supports your needs, you must balance innovative technology with other more reliable, proven system components.

My advice is first to let the users make their case — and don’t reach further into the future than what is appropriate for your organization.

For a more comprehensive look at the AV project planning process and how it differs from the design stage, see our guide on how to plan for your next AV project.

Design Issues

There is a strong tendency within organizations to design by committee. When building out a new AV project, multiple stakeholders often have many ideas about what needs to go into the system. This can lead to unnecessary complexity and bloat.

The issue is not just the risk of a convoluted and expensive project; designing by committee may also make the system much harder to use.

Here, again, the key is to identify the day-to-day needs of the core user group. If you can clearly articulate what it is they need to do, those functions should become your North Star as you avoid the temptation to incorporate every possible use case. Ultimately, you want to implement an interface that lets users do what they need to do in as few actions as possible. Avoid pages and pages of complex controls. Because if your system is seen as complicated and unreliable — even if that unreliability stems from user error — it will not get used at all.

Now, if you follow my next tip, you can always expand your system to accommodate other use cases in the future…

Commercial AV is a fast-moving industry, both in terms of the underlying technology and user expectations.

It wasn’t that long ago that businesses needed large, complex and expensive video conferencing modules (or “codecs”) to be professionally integrated into their AV systems to allow any sort of remote video collaboration. Now, video conferencing is primarily software-based, and users can join video calls from around the world with nothing more than a mobile phone.

While some of these seismic shifts can be difficult to plan for, many new needs can be identified within the context of a single system over time. Maybe some users prefer to present from a different conference room location, or an establishment needs to show more TV stations simultaneously than originally planned because of an event like the World Cup. Or, perhaps a once-emergent technology has finally become the standard, like when HDMI overtook VGA as the most common cable for laptop presentations.

Whether such changes require a small-and-painless or large-and-expensive AV upgrade will depend on the initial design. A good AV designer will create a system that is easily updated. This might entail using equipment with extra inputs and outputs, requiring extra cables to run through difficult pathways, or specifying a network-based interface that is easy to expand.

This sort of future-proofing makes the AV design stage the most cost-efficient time to accommodate changes — even if you’re not yet sure exactly what those changes will be! If you haven’t designed for future expansion, you can find yourself locked in. Then, complete replacement may be your only option to improve functionality.

Procurement Issues

If you put out an RFP or RFQ for your AV project and no one bids on it, you have a serious problem. This can be disheartening, and there are two main reasons why it happens:

1) The project’s requirements are not clearly defined.

Contractors don’t want to sign on to an ambiguous project that could expose them to exploding costs and other risks. If you haven’t received any offers, you’ve likely omitted a key piece of information from the request.

• Have you defined, as clearly as you can, what equipment and labour will be required?

• Have you expressed the goals of the system?

• Have you addressed the boundaries in scope between the AV contractor and the other trades on the project?

• Have you provided a general process that the contractor should follow?
  

2) How the bids will be evaluated is not clearly defined.

Bidders want to know there is a clear process behind the request and that their submission will be evaluated fairly. If they don’t, they may not feel it’s worth the effort to prepare and submit a proposal.

Remember, a commercial AV installation is a collaboration between the owner and the contractor. Put yourself forward as the type of organization you are — organized, clear, knowledgeable and fair — and those qualities will be reflected back to you by the bidders that participate.

Now, if you have received bids, but they’re not what you expected or are difficult to compare, you have a different problem with a more nuanced set of potential causes.

The problem is that dealing with multiple submissions that propose varying solutions can be a big challenge for project leaders and procurement officers. To avoid this sort of nebulous decision-making, you must clearly define the deliverables you expect to receive from the winning vendor. These deliverables extend beyond equipment listings and could include documentation and training requirements, personnel expectations, or more detail on how the completed system must function.

With this additional layer of detail in your request, you will receive bids that are in greater alignment and can be more easily assessed in an “apples-to-apples” comparison.

Of course, one of the most consequential areas where bids can differ is price. If you find wildly varying pricing between bids — or pricing, in general, that is much higher than anticipated — again, you are likely dealing with issues of definition and detail.

When contractors perceive poor definition and many unknowns in a request, they may pad their bids in order to compensate for areas where they’re not sure how much work they’ll need to provide. Your organization will pay the price for this — literally in the bid price, as well as during construction when the installers express frustration with the project’s actual scope.

For more information on attracting the best bids for your commercial AV installation, see our AV system procurement guide.

Execution Issues

The previous procurement pitfall can manifest itself during execution. By this point, you’ve procured a contractor and your AV system installation is underway. You may be several weeks or months into the project, and now your contractor is demanding extra fees for changes or additions.

I’ve mentioned that bidders may pad their bids to compensate for uncertainty. Well, that’s not always the case. When contractors perceive a highly competitive bidding situation, they will only price what’s asked of them in order to successfully win a project and not over-bid. They will omit what’s not asked of them or what might be implied.

Now, when this happens, the contractor will be much more likely to label certain tasks and requirements as extras that were not included in the initial contract. This can become a serious drain on the resources of all parties involved: the field technicians spend time on site asking their sales team about work that could be out-of-scope, the sales team goes to the general contractor or project manager to request the drafting of a change order, and now you have to consider whether to approve those change orders and pay accordingly — or play hardball with the installer, jeopardizing the partnership that is the foundation of your project’s success.

At the risk of sounding repetitive, again, the best way to avoid this problem would have been to produce an airtight RFP during the procurement process. Sadly, that time has passed, and now you are left to manage the symptoms of a poor foundation for your relationship with the contractor. This will require an understanding of the project’s power dynamics and project risk management, in general.

After the installation, the AV system is now functional. However, it quickly becomes clear that what you’ve received is not what you expected. This is a difficult situation that almost always results from a cascade of compounding failures or negligence throughout the entire project process.

The following factors will protect you from this outcome:

1. The purpose and paramount functionality of the system are clear from the outset. If you’ve consulted users and stakeholders during the discovery and planning stage, this should not be a mystery.

2. You have worked closely with the AV system designer to ensure the design elevates and supports the user experience and the needs uncovered during discovery.

3. The RFP is clearly defined, and bidders are evaluated not only on price but also on their experience and quality.

4. During construction, the project is closely monitored to ensure it’s coming together as everyone expects.

It’s not uncommon for a seemingly robust AV installation to begin presenting issues weeks or even months after delivery. There are three main layers of protection for this issue: AV commissioning, warranties, and service level agreements (SLAs).

AV Commissioning

AV commissioning is the process undertaken near the end of a project that ensures audiovisual systems are correctly installed, calibrated and optimized.

It is critical that commissioning is conducted by a knowledgeable third party and not the installation contractor. That way, you will receive an unbiased assessment of the system’s quality and, hopefully, proof that your system has a clean bill of health and that you’ve received what you’ve paid for. If not, any deficiencies can be rectified before the contract is closed.

A professional AV consultant will conduct tests to identify underlying issues not apparent at the surface level or to the untrained eye.

Warranties

Still, as with any piece of technology, issues can arise. When problems emerge after commissioning, it’s time to rely on your warranty, which should be clearly defined before a project is priced and not after, once you’re in trouble.

How many years is each piece of equipment warrantied for, and what does the resolution process look like? Define this in the bid. The warranties of individual pieces of equipment should be considered during the design stage. Then, during procurement, they should be clearly presented alongside the terms by which the contractor provides warranty labour.

Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

Complex projects or large facilities with sophisticated AV requirements should consider a service level agreement either for the individual project or the facility as a whole. This will ensure downtime is minimized and an appropriate level of response will be secured per the severity of an issue.

While warranties should be included in the initial installation contract, SLAs are often priced separately and can be purchased after the fact.

Once your system has been in operation for a while, you may wish to make repairs or improvements. But unless you bring in the same technicians that initially installed the AV equipment, this is almost impossible without documentation of what was installed and how.

Having your contractor provide documents such as detailed system drawings, maintenance instructions, and product manuals can save you a ton of work when troubleshooting. Without these guides, reverse engineering a commercial AV system to find out what’s wrong can be a nightmare.

At Chroma, we’ve refined our process to match the four key stages of a commercial AV installation project. If you’d like help ensuring your project runs smoothly from planning and design through procurement and execution, please don’t hesitate to book a call with us today.