Developing a full design of the DAS is the best way. Why is that?

Doing the actual full design of the DAS is the best way to get the right budget numbers for a DAS. You will get the full scope of the DAS, and the materials needed for it, and then you can look for quotes or bids for the construction, commissioning and turn-up process.

Invest a fraction of the overall cost of the DAS to get the design done.

Developing a full design of the DAS is the best way to develop a budget for DAS

Invest a fraction of the overall cost of DAS to hire a design & engineering company to complete the full design for the building or the campus. By fraction, I mean within less than 10% of the project, depending on what you want the designers to do.

In addition to doing the actual design, design & engineering firm can help you pick the right DAS platform for your building, help in educating your organization on DAS, participate in different planning meeting, answer questions from real estate, construction, IT or facilities group. But the main goal for them is to create the construction ready documents, that can be used in subsequent DAS deployment phases.

Once you have the construction ready documents from the design company, use that to collect quote for construction, commissioning and turn-up.

Although, you are spending little money up front, you get a few benefits out of this. So to summarize:

1. By designing the DAS first, you can use construction ready documents to get the cost of construction and turn-up.

2. With the actual design in hand, you can also start contacting the operators or carriers (e.g., AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, Verizon) for signal source ahead of building the DAS. Operators will take you more seriously when they see you have enough commitment to get the design done. It also gives the operator some time to review the design.

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