The department package

A department cannot fund eight research grade scanners. It can fund one, plus eight instruments good enough to teach on, and that is the difference between a scanner at the front of the room and an instrument in every pair of hands. This is that configuration, on one requisition and one purchase order.

What is in it

Why it is built this way

The split is technical, not commercial

The Trion P2 has no RTK module. That is not a cost saving we are working around, it is what the instrument is: an indoor, close range, as-built scanner. It genuinely cannot do georeferenced research work, which is exactly why the department also needs one S2 Max. We are specifying correctly rather than upselling, and if the eight P2s were the wrong call we would say so.

Eight cheap instruments teach more than one expensive one

Eight S2s would cost more than $150,000 and no undergraduate program is funding that. Eight P2s put a scanner in every pair of hands for a fraction of it. A student who has walked a building with a scanner and watched the trajectory drift in a featureless corridor understands SLAM. A student who has watched a demonstration does not.

One requisition, not nine

Nine separate purchase orders is nine approval cycles, nine invoices and nine chances for something to stall in a queue. Quoted as one line, it is one requisition, one PO and one invoice, and it matches the way an equipment budget line is actually written.

Where the money usually comes from

• Equipment lines in grant budgets. NSF, USDA and Title III budgets all carry them. The place to win this is the budget justification, six to twelve months before the money exists, and we will help write the specification into it.
• Fiscal year end residual spend. The April to June window, where a department has funds that must be obligated. Tell us the date and we will work to it.
• Accreditation driven capital requests. An ABET review cycle is a genuine trigger for lab investment and a genuine argument for making one.

How it is bought

1. Tell us the program. Class sizes, what students have to be able to do by the end of the course, and what the equipment line is. If the numbers do not fit, we will change the configuration rather than the price.
2. We quote by the next working day at the latest, itemized, on Boddie LLC letterhead, with the W-9 and vendor pack attached so vendor registration can start immediately.
3. The quote holds for 90 days, which covers a requisition cycle without prices moving underneath you.
4. Purchase orders accepted from universities, colleges and school districts, on net 30 terms.
5. Equipment ships direct from the manufacturer to your receiving dock with tracking.

Configuration is negotiable and the price is not discounted by percentage. If the budget is smaller, we change what is in it: six P2s instead of eight, or the standard S2 instead of the S2 Max. That way the reason for a number is always something you can point at in a justification, which is what a purchasing committee actually needs.