The scenario
A venue calls us because something needs changing on a four-year-old installation. The builder no longer exists, or no longer does this work, or is willing but has no time.
Then it emerges: there is no schematic. The code sits on a PC nobody has the password for. The configuration lives in a cloud account on the email address of someone who left.
What should have been a day's work becomes weeks of reverse engineering. And that is the good scenario, because sometimes the conclusion is that replacing is cheaper than working it out.
Why it happens so often
Not always out of ill will. Often the documentation simply never arrived, because the handover was under pressure and nobody asked for it afterwards.
Sometimes it is a choice. A client who cannot leave is a client who comes back. That is a business model, and it is not illegal, but you should know you are buying it.
And sometimes it is in the technology: a closed platform where the supplier keeps the keys, even though the installation is yours.
What you should be handed
The schematic. Not the drawing from before the build, but the drawing as it ended up, including the changes made during installation.
The source code. The program running on the controller, in a form that can be read and modified. Not only the compiled version sitting on the device.
The credentials. For the controller, the network, the media players and every cloud account belonging to the installation, on an address owned by the company rather than a person.
And the parts list: what is installed, of which type, and where to order it.
What we do
Schematics, source code and credentials are yours the moment the invoice is paid. You are free to have the system modified by whoever you like; that is none of our business.
Generic building blocks and libraries we already had stay ours, but you get a perpetual right to use them within the delivered system. So you are never locked in, not even by a licence that could expire.
We come back because you want us to, not because you are stuck with us.
How that reads in our terms →
What to ask before you sign
Do I get the as-built schematic, and when? Ask for a date, not an intention.
Do I get the source code, and in what form? If the answer is that it is not possible because it is their property, ask what happens when they stop.
Which account holds the credentials? If that is a personal email address, have it changed before handover.
And: may I have this modified by another party? The answer to that question tells you everything.
This is not ideology, it is risk management
An installation in a venue lasts ten years. Companies do not always last that long, and the people who built it certainly do not.
The question is not whether someone else will ever look at your installation, but when. Make sure that person finds something they can work with.
That is the same reason we label every core, including the spares: not for ourselves, but for the engineer we have never met.
To the relevant pages
