Society security proposals rarely stall on price. They stall on process — three quotes that cannot be compared, a committee that changes before the vote, and nobody able to answer “why this many cameras?” in a general body meeting without sounding like they are repeating a vendor.
If your quotes have been sitting for months, the problem is almost certainly one of the five below.
1. Your quotes are not comparable
Three vendors quote three different scopes, so the committee compares three totals and picks the lowest. Six months later the cheapest one turns out to have excluded cabling, or sized storage for eight days.
The fix: write your own scope first, then send the same scope to every vendor. It does not need to be technical. It needs to state:
- Every area to be covered (gate, each wing entrance, lift lobbies, each parking level, the perimeter, the guard room)
- The minimum number of days of footage the society wants to keep
- Whether visitor and vehicle logging is required
- Whether the price includes cabling, conduit, making good and labour
- What the first year of maintenance includes
Then require each vendor to itemise against it. A vendor who will not itemise is protecting a margin you are not allowed to see.
2. Nobody in the committee can defend the design
The member who collected the quotes becomes the de facto expert, and in a general body meeting they get asked a question they cannot answer. The proposal gets deferred “for more information” — which usually means forever.
The fix: get a site layout from the vendor with every camera and barrier position marked on it. A drawing does what a spreadsheet cannot: it lets a sceptical member see that the basement ramp is covered and the rear gate is not currently covered at all.
Ask the vendor to attend the meeting. A proposal defended second-hand is a proposal that gets deferred. We will attend committee and general body meetings for exactly this reason — it is usually the difference between a decision and another six months.
3. The budget is bigger than the appetite
The full scope is correct, and the society is not ready to spend that much at once. Rather than approve a phase, the committee approves nothing.
The fix: phase it — but phase by risk, not by building. The instinct is to do one wing at a time, which spreads thin coverage everywhere and closes no gap fully.
In almost every society the correct first phase is the gate and the perimeter:
- Boom barrier with access control, so entry is authorised rather than remembered
- A camera positioned to read number plates (a different position from general gate coverage — this catches vendors out)
- A camera at face height at the pedestrian gate
- Perimeter coverage along the compound wall
- Intercom so the guard can verify a visitor with the resident before opening
That phase closes the largest share of real risk. Lift lobbies and internal coverage genuinely matter, but they add most of their value once entry is already controlled.
4. The approval route was never checked
The committee spends three months on a proposal and then discovers the amount requires a general body resolution, or that the funds have to come from a special levy that needs its own notice period.
The fix: check your bye-laws at the start. Most set a limit above which the general body must approve. Find your limit, find the notice period, and work backwards from the next scheduled meeting. This costs an hour and routinely saves a full quarter.
5. There is no maintenance owner
The system gets installed, works well, and the committee changes. The new committee does not know who the vendor is, whether there is an AMC, or when the system was last checked. Two years later, someone needs footage and discovers three cameras have been offline for months.
The fix: treat this as part of the approval, not an afterthought. Before you sign:
- Agree an AMC with a stated scope and response expectation
- Put the system layout, vendor contact and AMC dates into the society’s permanent records — not one member’s phone
- Assign the role to a position (“the Secretary holds the security file”), not a person
- Set a recurring calendar reminder for the annual service
A proposal pack that actually gets approved
Ask your shortlisted vendor for all of this. A vendor who can produce it is telling you something about how they work:
- Written scope — plain language, one page, no jargon
- Itemised quote — every camera, barrier, cable run and hour of labour, separately
- Site layout — positions marked on a plan of the society
- Retention in days — stated explicitly, not implied by disk size
- Phasing option — what phase one buys if the full budget does not pass
- AMC terms — what is covered, what is not, and what response to expect
- Reference site — a comparable society you can call and visit
That pack survives a committee handover, a sceptical general body and a comparison against two other vendors. Most proposals fail because they contain only item two.
One honest word about cost
The cheapest quote is usually cheapest because it excluded something — commonly cabling, conduit, making good after chasing walls, or realistic storage. None of those are optional; they just move from the quote into a supplementary bill later, once the committee has already committed.
Compare like for like, and be suspicious of a total that is dramatically below the other two. It is rarely a better deal. It is usually a shorter list.
Related questions
Do we need a general body resolution, or can the managing committee decide?
It depends on your society's bye-laws and the amount involved. Most bye-laws let the managing committee approve expenditure up to a stated limit and require a general body resolution above it, or where the funds come from a special levy on members. Check your own bye-laws before starting — discovering this at the wrong moment costs you a whole meeting cycle.
How do we compare three quotes that all list different things?
Insist every vendor quotes the same scope and itemises it: each camera with its position, the recorder, storage in days rather than terabytes, cabling, and labour listed separately. Any vendor unwilling to itemise is protecting a margin you cannot see. A single lump sum with a camera count is not comparable to anything.
Should we install everything at once or in phases?
Phase it if the full budget will not pass. But phase by risk, not by building — fund the gate and perimeter first. Entry control and boundary coverage close the largest share of real risk, and internal lobby coverage adds most of its value only once entry is already controlled.
What happens when the committee changes next year?
This is the single most common reason a good installation degrades. Put the AMC, the system layout and the vendor contact into the society's permanent records rather than one member's WhatsApp. A system with no named maintenance owner quietly stops working, and nobody notices until footage is needed.