Westlands · West Park Towers · 8th floor
ISO 9001 procurement standards ● Authorised Cisco · Fortinet · Palo Alto · Dell EMC partner ● Twelve specialised practices · one operating discipline ● Direct vendor partnerships across infrastructure & security ● Engineering Kenya's public-sector infrastructure since 2018 ● ISO 9001 procurement standards ● Authorised Cisco · Fortinet · Palo Alto · Dell EMC partner ● Twelve specialised practices · one operating discipline ● Direct vendor partnerships across infrastructure & security ● Engineering Kenya's public-sector infrastructure since 2018 ●
Nairobi · Est. 2018
Brief · Design · Deploy · Maintain

Four phases. Always In This Order.

Real engineering follows a sequence. Skip a phase and the project owes a debt that comes due at cutover. The four phases below aren't theatre, they're the difference between a network that lights on the date promised and one that limps into production owing apologies.

Read the four phases Brief us with a project
Designed before deployed Installed by certified engineers Maintained past handover Direct vendor partnerships Designed before deployed Installed by certified engineers Maintained past handover Direct vendor partnerships

Most failures in this trade aren't engineering failures. They're sequencing failures, work started before the design was finished, kit ordered before the load was sized, cutover scheduled before the cabling was certified. We don't compress the order.

What's the same across every phase

Four operating constants
One accountable engineer
Same lead engineer through all four phases. They wrote the design, they pulled the cable, they take the call at 3am.
Weekly status
Plain-language status every Friday — what shipped, what's blocked, what's planned. No buried bad news.
Change-controlled
Scope, schedule, and cost change only via a written change request. No quiet drift between the brief and the bill.
No relays
No subcontractor relays. Our engineers are on site. If a face changes mid-project, you'll know why and meet the replacement first.
Phase 01

Brief.

You tell us the problem in plain language. We respond with the questions a senior engineer would ask — not a sales rep.

What happens

The brief is a conversation, not a discovery call. You describe the mandate — what's being built, what's failing, what the institution needs and by when. A senior engineer listens, asks the questions that need asking, and walks the site if the work calls for it. No kit is sold. No quote is issued. Nothing is committed until both sides understand the same problem.

For tender responses or audits, the brief is shorter and more documentary — we work from what you've already published and ask narrowly. For greenfield builds, the brief includes a site survey: spaces, paths, power, existing infrastructure, constraints we'll need to design around.

What you receive

  • Brief summaryOne-page document capturing the problem, constraints, and success criteria — in your words, confirmed back to you
  • Site survey notesFor physical mandates: spaces, paths, power, existing kit, blockers identified on site
  • Initial risk registerThe things we've already noticed could go wrong, raised before they cost you anything
  • Recommendation: proceed or passIf we can't deliver, we say so before Design begins. We don't take mandates we can't honour.
Common failure modes — what other firms get wrong
  • Selling the kit before understanding the problem. Vendors arrive with brochures. We arrive with questions.
  • Skipping the site survey. Saves a day at brief, costs three weeks at deploy when the actual building doesn't match the assumed one.
  • Junior screening. A senior engineer should be in the brief. If they're not, the design will reflect what the junior thinks the senior will approve.
Phase 02

Design.

Low-level design, BoQ, vendor selection, risk model — before any cable is purchased.

What happens

The design phase is where most of the engineering thinking happens. We translate the brief into low-level designs — pathway drawings for cabling, network topologies, security architectures, data centre layouts — at enough resolution that the install team can build from them without guesswork. Bills of quantities itemise every part down to the patch panel. Vendor selections are justified on price, performance, parts availability, and who'll answer the phone in two years.

For each major decision, we document the alternatives considered and why we chose what we chose. You sign off on the design before any procurement happens. Once design is approved, scope changes go through formal change-control — protecting both sides.

What you receive

  • Low-level design (LLD)Drawings, schematics, network topology, power schedules — at install-ready resolution
  • Itemised bill of quantitiesEvery part, every quantity, every unit cost. No "miscellaneous" line items.
  • Vendor matrixThe shortlist, the comparison, the recommendation, and the reasoning
  • Risk registerWhat could go wrong, how likely, how we mitigate, what triggers escalation
  • Fixed-fee proposalThe scope, the schedule, the price. What you sign sets the terms.
Common failure modes — what other firms get wrong
  • No LLD, just a quote. The "design" is a single-page diagram. The first surprise hits in week three of deployment.
  • Vendor lock pre-negotiated. The "comparison" was theatre — the firm had already committed to one vendor for kickback reasons.
  • Risk register absent. If nobody's named the risks before deployment, they'll all surface as cost overruns later.
Phase 03

Deploy.

Certified engineers execute the design — no subcontractor relays. Cutover when the work is truly ready, not when the calendar says it should be.

What happens

The engineers who designed the system are on site for the install. They know the design because they wrote it. They know the kit because they specified it. They know what each cable does and which port matters because they drew the schedule. There's no translation loss between design and deployment because there's no handoff.

Daily updates flow through your nominated point of contact. Scheduled milestones — first patch live, first switch online, first user migrated — are tested and signed off as we hit them. Where work touches the live environment, we operate inside change windows you control. Cutover only happens when the engineering is truly ready. If something tells us it isn't, we say so. The handover gate (described below) is non-negotiable.

What you receive

  • Daily deployment logWhat was done today, what's planned tomorrow, anything blocking us
  • Milestone sign-offsEach major step tested and accepted as we go — not all at the end
  • Test certificationsCabling certified with calibrated testers; networks performance-tested; security configurations baselined
  • Change requestsAnything that drifts from the design hits a written change request before work proceeds
  • As-built documentationFinal drawings, port maps, configurations, vendor warranty registrations
Common failure modes — what other firms get wrong
  • Subcontracted install. The senior who sold the work isn't on site. Junior subcontractors interpret the design — badly.
  • Cutover on the calendar date, not the readiness date. The network goes live half-tested. The first weekend is firefighting.
  • Silent scope drift. Small changes accumulate without paperwork. The bill at the end is unrecognisable.
The handover gate

What "ready for cutover" actually means.
The hard line we don't cross.

Before we recommend cutover, every item on this checklist must be done not in progress, not "scheduled for next week." Done, tested, signed off. If something on the list is missing, the date moves. The institution comes first.

  • Test certification complete. Cabling certified with calibrated testers. Network performance baselined. Security configuration validated against the design.
  • As-built documentation delivered. Final drawings, port maps, configurations, IP plans — current as of cutover, not as of design.
  • Vendor registrations filed. All warranties active and registered to the institution. Support pathways documented.
  • Operator training complete. The team that will run the system has been trained on the system that will be cut over — not a different one.
  • Rollback plan tested. If cutover fails, the rollback is rehearsed and ready. We don't migrate without an exit.
  • Maintenance contract in place. SLA terms agreed, escalation tree confirmed, named lead engineer briefed for support phase.
Phase 04

Maintain.

Multi-year support, monitored SLAs, and one named engineer accountable for your network — because real infrastructure doesn't end at handover.

What happens

Most ICT mandates are written as if delivery is the end. It isn't. The day the network goes live is the day the real work begins — keeping it running, ageing it gracefully, refreshing it before it fails. Our maintenance phase is a multi-year relationship with documented SLAs, scheduled preventive work, and a named lead engineer who knows your site because they built it.

SLA tiers vary by mandate — typically four-hour critical response with named on-call engineers, monthly preventive maintenance windows, quarterly capacity reviews, annual lifecycle planning. The same lead engineer stays on the account. If they have to rotate (career moves, parental leave), you meet the replacement and the handover is documented before the change. No silent role swaps.

What you receive

  • Multi-year support agreementSLA terms, response times, escalation tree, named lead engineer — all written down
  • Scheduled preventive maintenanceMonthly windows for patches, firmware, configuration drift checks
  • Monitoring & reportingContinuous monitoring with monthly reports — uptime, incidents, capacity trends
  • Quarterly capacity reviewWhat's growing, what's ageing, what'll need refreshing in the next twelve months
  • Annual lifecycle planMulti-year roadmap so refreshes don't surprise the budget
Common failure modes — what other firms get wrong
  • Engineer rotation without notice. The senior who built the network leaves. The juniors who replace them don't know the history. Two years in, nobody on the vendor side knows why anything is the way it is.
  • SLAs in marketing copy, not contract. The "four hour response" sounds great until you're four hours into an outage and nobody's picked up.
  • No capacity tracking. The institution discovers it's at 95% capacity the week before procurement closes. Emergency refresh follows.

The discipline behind every phase.

Standards · partnerships · accountability
Quality
ISO 9001 aligned
Procurement and delivery follow documented quality-management procedures across every mandate.
Vendor authority
Authorised partner
Cisco · Fortinet · Palo Alto · Dell EMC · VMware · Microsoft · Huawei · Check Point.
References
Available on request
Contactable references across National Treasury, KALRO, MoE programmes, and the Judiciary.
Accountability
Insurance & performance bonds
Project insurance and performance bonds available to match tender requirements.

Have a project
that has to land?
Brief us.

Tell us about the mandate; the scope, the timeline, the constraints. A senior engineer will respond with a real conversation, not a sales pitch.

Or email info@techsource.co.ke
Brief our engineers
Step 1 of 4

What's the mandate?

Pick the closest description. You can clarify in the next step.

How big?

A rough idea is fine — we'll scope properly during the brief.

When do you need it?

If you're exploratory, that's fine — we'll send you our credentials pack instead.

How can a senior engineer reach you?

A senior engineer will respond within one business day.