One vendor quotes cameras, one quotes cameras and access control, one quotes a system that also records the patrol. The cheapest wins on paper, and six months later the site cannot prove what the contract says it must prove. We write the specification first — what the site has to demonstrate, to whom, and by when — so every quote is answering the same question.
Not a camera that recorded something: a record that names the officer, the site, the time and the patrol point, and can be produced on the day a client asks. Attendance and patrol proof is the part clients withhold payment over.
Cameras overwrite. A record of an incident that has aged out of the recorder is the same as no record. Retention, backup and who can retrieve it are specified, not assumed from the box.
An incident report that has to be retyped for the client and again for the officer's file is two versions of the truth. One entry, carrying officer, site, client and date into both, is the requirement worth specifying.
We write the requirement with you, in language a vendor can price against. You take your own quotes — we do not take a commission from any vendor, and we name nobody. When the work is delivered we check it against the specification, point by point, before you release the final payment.
No equipment margin, no installer relationship, no reason to prefer one brand. That is the only way the specification stays honest, and it is why the quotes you get can be compared to each other.
It is not buying the wrong camera. It is buying a system that cannot produce the record.
Resolution, channels, night vision, app. All true and all beside the point if the client's contract asks for patrol attendance with times, or an incident trail that can be printed.
The gap is discovered when a client disputes a patrol, or an incident is questioned, and the site cannot produce the record. By then the equipment is installed and the budget is gone.
The retrofit costs more than the original system because the wiring, the mounts and the access control are already fixed. Writing the requirement first is the cheapest step in the whole project.
One page of requirements, three comparable quotes, a delivery checked point by point, and a record that answers the question the first time it is asked.
Twenty minutes on what your client actually asks you to demonstrate. If your current system already covers it, we will say so and you owe nothing.
See the record it produces Ask about a siteThe grant note
One email a week at most: what the government is offering an SME this month, which schemes have closed, and the one thing to check before you spend — in the order that keeps the claim valid. No pitch, and nothing about our own fees.