RF Design Through Milestones

RF Site Design services tend to come in two main forms; milestone and staffing. Milestone based design services offers more control to the client as well as increases quality of work in ways that general staffing cannot. With milestone services, the operator is able to control the number of resources for the particular place in the design process without increasing the expenses. For design projects, the beginning and end of the projects typically require more resources and the staffing agency would provide additional staff to meet the need. In staffing instances, the individuals working on the assignment would be significantly busier during those times unless an additional resource was brought in at additional cost.

In the continual push for lower cost spending, milestone projects are also helpful for design projects when budgets are unclear. Since the client is only paying for work that is completed, there is no wasted cost if the project were to go on hold for any reason; waiting for additional budget, needing clarification on design guidelines, etc. The values for the work can be broken down to as many milestones and at any value by the operator. This can be beneficial to make sure a staffing agency does not leave the project early or reducing their headcount. Operators have the opportunity to manage the process without having to manage the people.

Milestone definition is the key to savings. Operators do not want to pay out a RF Site visit milestone while teams go out for a carrier add, new technology deployment, and equipment upgrade. Rather pay one milestone to accomplish all three. Working with experience project management teams to streamline these activities is key from both the organization executing the milestone as well as the operators assigning them. Overlapping ongoing and planned projects with similar milestone definitions allows for this milestone efficiency savings.

Quality of work can also be improved on a milestone project based on the ability to add a new engineer or easily replace an engineer that may be under performing. There is no need to adjust purchase orders or go through a strenuous hiring process. A new engineer can come on and start working right away. The amount of work performed by the operator is reduced by not having to manage the engineering team, status, and process but rather the supplied result updates and assure milestones are being met with proper quality. There is no need to review and approve weekly engineering schedule and work, just milestones and send any issues to the design project manager.

There is a general drawback in milestones in that engineering teams can only be asked to perform work that milestones are established/defined for. Often this lack of flexibility of using engineers available in market can cause strain and must be considered. Milestone based design services offer a more economical and productive way to achieve the same or better results from those of general staffing.