INFRA Signal 425
Provision infrastructure during construction because retrofitting is expensive
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Illustration only Photo by imgix on Unsplash
A home infrastructure project demonstrates that adding capacity during construction is cheap, while retrofitting later carries disproportionate cost.
The principle applies wherever adding capacity after the fact requires breaking through existing systems. Engineers who under-provision during initial builds face steep costs when requirements change, and physical infrastructure cannot be scaled with an API call.
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A dedicated 20A floor outlet for raclette machines cost almost nothing during construction but would require breaking tiles to retrofit later.
The author ran eight single-mode fibers and oversized electrical feeds to a small office, optimizing for cost of future change rather than current utilization.
The one mistake was using 35mm conduits without pull strings, making future cable upgrades difficult despite the over-provisioning philosophy.
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