The brief
The MSP had a tender deadline. They had PDF floor plans, a client density guess (open plan plus 8-person meeting rooms) and a preference for ceiling APs on a 5 GHz-led design. They did not want a site visit until after CAT6 was in.
Phase one was a predictive desktop survey in Ekahau AI Pro: wall types from the drawing notes, attenuation libraries, 5 and 6 GHz where the AP hardware allowed, and a BOM the installer could price.
What the model showed
Open plan was easy. The risk was the core: two concrete stair cores, a comms room Faraday-cage effect, and a row of meeting rooms with glass fronts and solid backs. The model wanted APs in the meeting-room ceilings, not only in the floor plate, if Microsoft Teams in those rooms was a requirement.
We also flagged overlapping SSIDs from the landlord’s leftover controller in the basement. That is not a heatmap colour. It is a note on the report: disable or isolate before clients arrive.
What we found after install
The validation walk happened once furniture and plasterboard were in. Two meeting rooms had been built with extra layers the CAD called “partition”. Primary coverage in those rooms missed the -67 dBm target. One AP had been spun 90 degrees on the grid to miss a light fitting.
We did not sell a whole new design. We recommended two extra APs, a mount rotation and a channel tweak. The MSP closed the snagging list with photos and a before/after heatmap in the same .esx project.
Result
The client occupied on the original AP count plus two. The MSP kept the contract. The report listed RSSI, SNR, channel overlap, roaming notes and a switch-port mapping so the next engineer was not guessing.
This pattern is common for office WiFi surveys in Reading, London and along the M4. Predictive first; validation before you sign the building off.