A checklist to work through before you commission a studio audit

An audit is a written review of an existing studio: cabling, power, signal paths and risks, ending in a prioritised action list. Before you ask anyone to carry one out, write down the single question you want it to answer. It might be why the gallery drops a feed during long programmes, whether the room can take another camera, or whether the studio is safe to hand over to a new team.

A vague brief produces a vague report. If the honest answer is that nobody trusts the studio any more, say so, because that points the reviewer towards the whole signal chain rather than one rack. Two or three sentences on paper are enough. Share them with whoever works in the room every week, since they often know about the problem that never reaches the fault log.

• What has gone wrong, and how often
• What decision the report must support
• Who will read it and act on it

Agree the edges of the work in writing. A studio audit normally covers cabling and patching, mains distribution and earthing, the signal path from camera to output, and the risks that follow from them. Lighting design, room acoustics and operator training are separate subjects, and mixing them in makes a report long without making it clearer.

If you want a second opinion on one area, such as the router or the intercom, name it and say how deep you expect the inspection to go. State plainly any areas that are off limits, for example a landlord's electrical intake or equipment leased from another party. A reviewer can note such limits in the report, but cannot guess them.

• Rooms included: studio floor, gallery, rack room
• Systems included: video, audio, intercom, power
• Anything leased or shared that cannot be opened

Most of the time on site is lost looking for drawings that may not exist. Collect what you have: rack elevations, patch lists, router tables, network diagrams, equipment inventories with serial numbers, and any previous fault logs or engineer reports. Incomplete is fine. Knowing that no drawing exists is itself a finding, and the reviewer will record it.

Also pull together the history of changes. A studio rarely stays as it was installed, and temporary fixes become permanent. A note saying that the second camera cable was rerouted two winters ago explains an odd result in seconds. Ask whoever has been there longest to mark up a floor plan by hand, even roughly.

• Drawings and patch lists, however old
• Fault logs from the last year or so
• Names of previous installers, where known

Cabling and power cannot be judged from a chair. The reviewer needs to open racks, lift floor boxes, trace looms and sometimes power equipment down in a controlled way. That means access outside transmission, ideally on a day when nothing is booked, and someone who knows the building to open doors and answer questions.

Be honest about how long the studio can be disturbed. A small single-room studio may be reviewed in a day, while a larger site with a separate gallery and rack room takes longer. If the room only goes quiet late in the evening, say so at the outset. Rushed inspection at the end of a busy week is the quickest way to a report that misses the loose connector behind the monitor wall.

• Out-of-hours access if programmes run daily
• A named contact who knows the building
• Permission to open racks and floor boxes

Ask in advance what you will receive. A good audit is written in plain language, organised by system, and ends with an action list in order of priority: what is a safety or reliability risk now, what should be planned within the year, and what is merely untidy. Each item should say where it is, why it matters and roughly what putting it right involves.

Be wary of a report that is only a long inventory, or one that says everything is fine without showing what was checked. You should be able to hand the document to an electrician, an installer or a finance manager and have each of them find the part that concerns them. Photographs of the problem areas help more than paragraphs of description.

• Findings grouped by system and location
• Priorities stated, not left for you to guess
• Photographs attached to the points that matter

The report is only the start. Before commissioning it, decide who owns the follow-up and what budget, if any, exists. An action list nobody is responsible for becomes another document in a shared folder. Name one person to read it, and agree a date to meet and sort the items into work you will do yourselves, work for the audit team, and work for others such as the building's electrician.

It also helps to decide in advance what would change your plans. If the review finds a power fault, will you pause bookings? If it finds ageing cabling, is there appetite to replace it in stages? Thinking this through now keeps the conversation calm when the findings arrive, and avoids spending the first week arguing about whether to act.

• One person accountable for follow-up
• A rough budget range, even if provisional
• A date to review the list together