“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”
Alexander Graham Bell
Here at Iowa State, we ordered all our hardware for summer 2022 upgrades last December, hopeful that we could get in the queue early enough to get everything we needed for our summer plans. Those parts have not arrived, and the ship dates continue getting pushed out. Even critical hardware we ordered last October still has not arrived. I know many of you are in exactly the same spot, and I have heard from many peers that they have already canceled most or all major technology upgrade efforts this summer. As an in-house integrator, I have two amazing teammates who are primarily installers, and this has been and will continue to be a real challenge for what they need to be doing. So, what should in-house integrators be thinking about in the midst of the current supply chain climate? When the summer install door closes, what other doors should we open?
With the current reality, good advice is to keep plans flexible. As of now, a key ship date for me is June 30th. Do I believe that date? No, no way. However, at some point those parts will actually ship – maybe June 15th (OK, OK, keep the laughter down), maybe June 30th, maybe December 23rd (Merry Christmas!). The old idiom goes, “hope for the best but plan for the worst,” but today my advice is, “plan for the best and plan for the worst.” As such, I am working with our classroom scheduling team to reserve classrooms for upgrades in July and early August, all while knowing the ship date is very likely to be further delayed. If the parts really do ship, we’ll be ready to take advantage. These summer scheduling considerations quickly combine with long-term planning for winter break and summer 2023. We have already placed some orders for summer 2023 hardware, and when more money becomes available on July 1st, we are going to order a LOT more. I would encourage all of you to do the same; unfortunately, ordering 12 months out could be prudent for several more years. There are also some smaller upgrade projects we may be able to tackle – we have some hardware on the shelf that can improve our hybrid capabilities in a few rooms; now is the time to tackle some of these smaller lower-priority projects. Again, the key here is keeping plans malleable and being ready to adjust to current realities.
In the meantime, I am simultaneously thinking and planning for other activities that can benefit the university in the (likely) event the parts don’t arrive. So, what are some alternative plans that should be considered for our summers instead? I asked my higher ed #AVTweeps that question, and I had some answers I was already considering as well as some great new ideas, here are a few:
- Kevin Hartman from the University of Buffalo said, “Cross-training and professional development, possibly training on using a new LMS.”
- BC Hatchett from Vanderbilt said, “Update documentation, clean and clean and clean again, tackle more training, and actually have some downtime.”
- Erin Maher-Moran from Johns Hopkins said, “We’re going to set up a new asset management/inventory system, redo our website, and probably a couple of other projects we’ve put off because we were so busy.”
- Ryan Gray from Yavapai College said, “Getting ready to pull the plug on my biggest summer project. Will double down on implementation of D-Tools, training, reinvention of our shop space and deep PM checks. Oh yeah and then guilt-free summer vacations for my people.”
At ISU, we have a few things we are looking at for this summer. First, as BC said, we could do a lot deeper cleaning of our classroom tech than we often do. We also need to continue evaluating our storage areas (kudos to my team, we have made incredible strides in the last few years, but there is still more we can do); those parts we ordered for 2023, when some of them arrive in only a few months, we’ll need open space to store them. Second, similar to what Erin said, we could do serious inventory work. For us, inventory could be a two-fold project, taking an inventory of our shelf stock, what we have on shelves for future projects, spare parts, and “well we might need this someday” items; and then getting an accurate account of our field inventory – the technology components currently installed and in use in our classrooms. Third, we could tackle a thorough safety review; I suspect there are legacy installations in place that are not properly mounted and/or don’t have secondary safety lines attached; time to identify any such scenarios, clean those up, and get them safely mounted.
I wish I had all these amazing ideas on how to break through this supply chain mess and get your parts expediated in time for summer; unfortunately, I’m pretty sure no such miraculous ideas exist. Sure, we can look at alternative vendors for some things, but when your campus is built around an Extron or Crestron ecosystem, there are simply limits to what is prudent. Instead, get comfortable with uncertainty and keep your plans flexible. There are always other doors to open.
