2027 Agenda

Agencies procuring critical communications systems routinely budget, plan, and staff as if the vendor's contract represents the full scope of the deployment. In practice, a "turnkey" system rarely exists in isolation — its performance and go-live date depend on a web of adjacent infrastructure that falls outside the vendor's contractual responsibility and, often, outside the procuring agency's own subject-matter expertise.

This session examines the gap between the scope of the contract and the scope of the actual deployment, using real-world examples where overlooked or underestimated supporting systems became the critical path for project delays, cost overruns, and post-go-live performance issues. Leave with a practical framework for scoping full-system dependencies during procurement — not just the radio — including questions to ask vendors, internal stakeholders to engage early, and contract language that surfaces these gaps before they become schedule risks. The goal is not to indict "turnkey" as a concept, but to equip agencies and integrators to define it honestly, so the term describes a deployment reality rather than a procurement fiction.