Hiring the right integrators makes any building or remodeling project go smoother. By Ed Wenck
Adam Gibson, CMKBD is the brains behind Adam Gibson Design — he’s an architectural designer who specializes in high-end kitchen
and bath projects in the American Midwest. His watchwords are “warmth, simplicity, and clarity in design,” but that doesn’t mean he’s tech-averse — he embraces it, and he works with residential technology integrators regularly to allay client concerns.
He’s encountered many folks who have purchased devices, attempted to connect them all via Wi-Fi, and watched their “smart home” dreams become a pile of annoying gadgets.
“We hear this all the time from people who tried the DIY approach,” says Gibson. “’OK, I did this, this and this — and now this, this and this don’t work.’ That’s why the knowledge and experience of someone who knows this stuff is critical.”
Christopher Wright of Wrightworks, LLC, one of the leading remodelers in the Great Lakes region, sums up the issue: “There’s this increasing challenge of having homeowners go to some home center and then there are all these end caps of connected products. They’re marketed like this: ‘Just take it home, plug in your Wi-Fi password, and install an app!’
“So now we have all this app clutter because our clients are buying these little one-off things, and then when they do a major project, they bring them to us and say, ‘Hey, I have all this. Can we incorporate this into the project, too?’”
If there’s a single message Wright wants to impart to other builders, it’s this: “You don’t have to be a techie. That’s what your CEDIA partner is there for.”
Wright expands on that last point: “You don’t have to be the smartest person in the room when your clients ask: ‘What about privacy? What about security? What about when I want to do something different or expand down the road?’ Those are questions for the integrator.”
CEDIA integrators can be found at www.cedia.com.
And builders are bombarded with a lot of the same questions that integrators field, says Wright.
“When it comes to technology, I think there are the usual customer fears of obsolescence. They fear that the system is going to be overly complicated. They fear that they’re going to be over-sold. That it’s just going to start spiraling out of control. A lot of my projects are partnerships with people like Adam, and so a lot of the designers with whom I work have a fear that any dollars spent on technology are going to come right out of the beautiful things that they want to put in a house. Those are some of the things that we have to get around.”
But, ultimately, says Wright, “My goal is not to be a CEDIA member and learn how to hook up networks and wire TVs. The end goal is to build beautiful things and have happy clients.”
