I’ve got a lot of aphorisms that I like to live by but the notion that “It’s Better To Be Prepared Than Postpared” is one of my favorites. Sometimes I take it too far, but when it comes to system design, I don’t think that’s possible. Related to that, I’m also inclined to believe that there’s no such thing as overkill.

I get the sense that there’s a much greater awareness among industry pros of the need to be future forward in system design than there was a few years ago. Maybe we’ve been burned too many times by the pace of technological innovation, or maybe we all recognize that leaving a path open to facilitate future upgrades is a great way to build loyalty and get repeat business out of our clients. Regardless, I’m in favor of it.

This whole train of thought and blog post was inspired by a visit to a friend’s house the other weekend. He’s a boilermaker by trade, and has been furiously trying to finish the interior of the garage in his new house before winter set in (he didn’t make it). He was telling me what he’d done so far, in suitable overkill fashion, from insulation and wiring to putting into the ventilation units, HVAC (discrete from the rest of the home) and controls, prior to getting the drywall up. When I asked him, “What, are you building a manufacturing facility in here?” He responded that he wanted his garage/workshop/mancave to be complete in every way. He said, “Why, I’ve even run conduit and power to a TV location for when I want to hang a flat panel on the wall.”

Conduit. It’s awesome how something so simple as a pipe can be future forward.