How we work
Every Engineer Austin engagement, on site in Central Texas or remote, follows the same four steps: we assess what you have, propose in writing, onboard without surprises, and support under one Managed Service Program. Below: what you receive at each step, how long it takes, how to reach us, and what we need from you.
Four steps, each with a deliverable
Assess
We visit your site. We inventory every device, save the as-found configuration, and fix what can safely be fixed on the same visit with your sign-off. Cabling, Wi-Fi and hardware condition cannot be judged remotely, so we look.
You receive: a written assessment report with each device assigned one of six dispositions (Retain, Upgrade, Reassign, Repurpose, Replace, Retire) and the reasoning behind it. The report is yours to keep whether or not you buy anything.
Propose
Within ten business days of the visit you get a technology modernization plan and a firm hardware quotation, prepared and checked by our team to standards set by our licensed engineer. Every line is marked required, recommended or optional, so any item can be removed without renegotiating the whole, and the proposal also prices the least you could reasonably spend for a working, secure result. Hardware quantity may be zero.
You receive: the plan and a firm written quotation. If you proceed, your written approval of the quotation is what starts the work. You approve at your own pace.
Onboard
After signing, onboarding runs as a few email threads (contract and billing, assessment and hardware, email and domain), each with a named lead from our office. Approved hardware is imaged, updated, hardened, encrypted and enrolled at our office, then shipped. Microsoft 365 tenant work is done remotely with the source left untouched until the migration is verified. The onboarding session ends with MFA confirmed working and a live test restore.
You receive: your complete configuration in writing, a one-page restore procedure, and admin credentials in your own name.
Support
Monitoring and endpoint protection are deployed, network devices are placed under management, and the routine begins: patching, helpdesk, backup verification, security-training enrollment and documentation.
You receive: a quarterly business review, an annual written infrastructure assessment timed ahead of your budget cycle, and direct confirmation from the technician when each request is closed.
Onboarding, week by week
A realistic sequence for a typical small office moving onto the Managed Service Program with a network refresh and a Microsoft 365 migration. Larger sites take longer; sites that need no hardware go faster. The dates that depend on you are marked.
| When | What happens | What you see |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Assessment visit. Every device inventoried, as-found configuration saved, safe fixes made the same day with your sign-off. | A visit of several hours, a short list of what changed that day, and a few questions about how your office actually works. |
| Weeks 2 to 3 | Report, modernization plan and firm quotation written and checked by our team, delivered within ten business days of the visit. | The written report, the plan, the quotation and a list of decisions only you can make. |
| Your pace | You approve the scope in writing. Public entities take it to their board or council; we attend if asked. Nothing is ordered until you approve the quotation in writing. | No time pressure from us. Quotation validity is stated on the document. |
| About 2 weeks after approval | Hardware ordered, then imaged, updated, hardened, encrypted and enrolled at our office before it ships. | Equipment arrives configured. Network devices are swapped in a short, scheduled window. |
| 2 to 3 weeks after approval, in parallel | Microsoft 365 tenant built or migrated remotely: domain, email authentication, mailboxes, SharePoint and OneDrive structure, security policy. The source is untouched until the copy is verified. | Staff keep working on the old system until cut-over. One or two short questions a week about names, folders and retention. |
| Onboarding session | A live remote session with your staff: MFA confirmed working for every user before the session ends, a test restore performed while you watch, the restore procedure handed over. | About an hour. Your complete configuration in writing and admin credentials in your name. |
| Program begins | Monitoring and endpoint protection deployed, network devices under management, documentation current, state cybersecurity training enrolled where required, quarterly reviews calendared. | A two-hour response target, direct confirmation when each request closes, and the first quarterly review about three months later. |
| One year | Annual written infrastructure assessment, timed ahead of your budget cycle, with the restore procedure re-verified. | A plan your board or owners can budget from, and a note of every standard that changed during the year. |
Response targets
These are the targets written into every Managed Service Program. We do not advertise what we cannot document.
| Situation | Target response | Target resolution | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Remote request during business hours | Within 2 hours | Same business day for non-critical issues | Drawn from your included hours. Business hours are Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central. |
| On-site visit when remote work cannot fix it | Scheduled within 1 business day | On site within 5 business days, sooner by agreement | Quoted before scheduling if the visit is unscheduled. |
| After-hours or weekend | 4-hour callback | As severity requires | By arrangement, outside the monthly fee, at the after-hours rate. |
| Emergency (critical outage, security incident, imminent threat) | Within 1 hour | Continuous effort until restored | By arrangement, at the emergency rate. |
| Automated device health and endpoint alerts | Automated, continuous | Alerts reviewed in business hours; escalated by severity | Included. |
| Scheduled maintenance and patching | Pre-arranged with notice | As scheduled | Included. |
Every request is logged in our internal work records and tracked to resolution. We do not force a client-facing ticketing portal on small offices; email or a phone call is enough. Clients who need one can ask for a periodic or monthly summary of requests, resolutions and status. We do not guarantee uninterrupted or error-free operation, and we will not tell you otherwise.
How to reach us, and what to tell us
support@engineeraustin.com is the right channel for anything that is not stopping work: a slow computer, a new user to set up, a question about a license. Every email becomes a logged request with a reference number and the two-hour business-hours response target, and the technician who closes it confirms with you directly.
Phone
(512) 481-2710, Monday to Friday, 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM Central. Call when something is down or when several people are affected. After hours, the same number reaches the on-call arrangement for clients who have one; the target is a four-hour callback, one hour for an emergency.
Who answers
Our helpdesk lead or a systems administrator takes the request. Network, server and security problems escalate to the senior administrator or our network specialists, and questions that need a licensed engineer go to our engineer. You will not be asked to repeat yourself at each step; the log travels with the request.
What to include in a request
- Who is affected: one person, one office or everyone
- What you were doing and what happened instead, in your own words
- When it started, and whether anything changed just before
- The exact error text or a screenshot, if there is one
- Whether work is stopped or you can keep going
- The best number to call you back on
If you suspect a security incident (a ransom note, a login you did not make, an urgent payment request that feels wrong), call rather than email, do not switch the machine off, and do not forward the suspicious message to anyone else. Unplugging the network cable is fine. We treat these as emergencies, with a one-hour response target.
What you own
Your data is yours. Our scripts, templates and custom configurations are our intellectual property, licensed for your use while you are a client. Nothing we deploy locks your data or accounts to Engineer Austin.
- Your Microsoft 365 tenant, your domains and your Global Administrator credentials stay in your name at all times.
- Hardware and licenses you bought, including those we procure for you, are your property.
- Documentation of what is installed is yours: inventory, diagrams, registers, restore procedures, reports and a written record of your settings (firewall rules, VLANs, security policy, backup jobs, retention), with no passwords, keys or tokens inside them.
- You remain the registrant of your domain names; we hold administrative access only so renewals are never missed.
- Network equipment managed from our own UniFi and UISP servers is your hardware; on request we release it for adoption by a controller you or your next provider run.
- What stays ours: our scripts, tools, templates, support methods and custom configurations and rule sets, such as our MikroTik firewall standards and UniFi and UISP configurations. They are licensed for your use while you are a client or continue paying for the related service.
- If we part ways, your data, credentials and administrative access are returned promptly on request.
Documentation standards
Documentation is the deliverable, not an afterthought. Depending on the work, you receive:
- As-found and as-left records for every network change
- A numbered findings register, severity-rated, with a recommendation and an owner for each item
- A risk register with likelihood, impact and status
- A proposed 30-day sequence and a list of decisions you need to make
- Device inventory, IP addressing and network diagrams, kept current under management
- A one-page restore procedure, tested live with your staff and re-verified at the annual review
- Equipment age and replacement-priority sheets, and an account register
- Formal reports under document control: a revision table, dated amendments rather than silent rewrites, and a confidentiality notice
Change control
These rules are how we keep a small fix from becoming an outage. They apply to every firewall, server, tenant and database we touch, whether a person or an AI assistant drafted the change.
Read-only first
Health checks and assessments are performed read-only. Remediation is a separate step with its own written approval.
Written approval
Nothing is purchased, licensed or changed without written approval from your Authorized Contact. Budgetary figures are always replaced by a firm written quotation before anything is ordered.
Backup before change
Configuration is exported and a restore point confirmed before work begins. On-site network changes happen only with your sign-off on the day and the as-found configuration saved first.
Scripted, logged, reversible
Changes are made by script, timestamped and logged, with a rollback script written alongside. Accounts are disabled, not deleted. After a build, the result is read back and checked line by line against the script.
After-hours windows
Work that could interrupt staff, such as firmware upgrades, voice changes or circuit cut-overs, is scheduled outside business hours, with written notice of what will be done, which systems are affected, the expected downtime and who will be on site. Public bodies can set their own notice period. Work that carries no traffic is staged during the day.
Restricted remote access
Remote administration paths are encrypted and limited to authorized personnel; our remote access is tightly restricted and protected with MFA. When someone leaves our team, their access to client systems is removed the same day. Equipment is pre-provisioned at our office before it ships, with default credentials removed.
AI-assisted steps, with guardrails
Much of engineering is careful repetition: reading logs, comparing configurations, writing up what was found. AI assistants, run through approval-gated tooling, now do the first pass on that work so our people spend their time on judgment. Here is where they help and what never changes.
Where AI assists
- Assessment. Inventories and event logs are analyzed in hours rather than days; our staff confirm the findings on site.
- Proposal. Reports and modernization plans are drafted from the as-found record and cross-checked by our team against our house standards before they are issued.
- Onboarding. Configurations, migration scripts and tenant settings are drafted and checked against the written design; a person reviews the diff before anything is applied.
- Support. Runbooks and restore procedures are kept current, and recurring checklists are executed rather than remembered.
- Software. Internal tools are built faster, with tests and review gates between the draft and the release.
What never changes
- A person reviews every AI-assisted change before it runs
- Every change is logged with a timestamp and a rollback, exactly as a hand-written one
- Your written approval comes first; no tool changes your systems on its own
- Client secrets are never pasted into public AI tools; sessions are controlled and access is limited to the task
- A named member of our team reviews and signs off on the result
What we expect from you
The program works when both sides keep to the written rules. Six things make the difference between a tidy engagement and a frustrating one.
An Authorized Contact
Name one or two people empowered to approve services and spending. For public entities this is usually the chief executive within board-approved amounts. Changes to the list are made in writing.
Written approvals
A reply to an email or a signature on the quotation is enough. We will not order hardware, buy a license or make a planned change on a verbal go-ahead, and we will not ask you to.
Access
Administrative access to the systems under management, a way into the building for scheduled visits, and the right to monitor managed devices. Our remote access is tightly restricted and protected with MFA; you keep every credential in your name.
No unmanaged changes
Tell us before another vendor or a staff member changes a managed system. A change we did not know about is the most common cause of a problem we cannot explain, and a quick heads-up lets us plan around it.
Decisions, when they are yours
Retention periods, which license options to choose, which optional items to include: we lay the choices out with the consequences, and we need your answer to proceed. The report lists them so nothing waits unnoticed.
Staff time at the right moments
About an hour from each person at the onboarding session, so MFA is set up and the new system is familiar before the old one is switched off, and about an hour a year for the state-required cybersecurity training where it applies.
How billing works, in plain words
Managed Service Program
One program, not tiers. The monthly fee is sized by what is actually under management: workstations, servers, network devices, storage devices, users and mailbox-only users, with included remote and on-site hours. Counts are reviewed monthly, so the fee moves with you.
Project work
Projects are quoted as a fixed fee or billed time and materials, portal to portal, and we recommend whichever suits the job and your budget. You can take project work without a program, a program without projects, or both. We stand behind our work and correct our own mistakes at no charge.
Fewer subscriptions
Where it does not cost you security or support, we choose equipment whose licensing is included for the life of the device and mature open-source software, and we manage network gear from our own servers rather than a per-device cloud plan. The savings show up as fewer renewals on your invoice, not as weaker protection.
Nothing ordered without your approval
Hardware and licenses are quoted in writing, and nothing is ordered until you approve. We can procure, configure and deploy them for you, or you may buy direct and we help deploy.
Terms are set out in a written agreement, and Texas public bodies receive terms written for public-entity requirements. Nothing is bought before it is justified. The assessment report, the quotation and the modernization plan are all written so a board or council can budget rather than react. The assessment and plan are described in detail under IT consulting and assessments.
If you leave, you leave whole
Clients should stay because the work is good, not because leaving is hard. If you end the program, this is what happens:
- Your remaining data, credentials and administrative access are returned promptly on request, and further transition help is available if you want it.
- The documentation of what is installed (inventory, diagrams, configuration records and restore procedure) is handed to you or to whoever follows us, in a form another competent firm can pick up.
- Our remote-access paths, monitoring agents and administrative accounts are removed from your systems, and we confirm the removal to you.
- Our proprietary scripts, templates and custom configurations are not licensed for continued use after the service ends; your next provider works from the documentation.
- Nothing we deployed needs us to keep running. Your accounts were built in your name, to a written standard, for exactly this moment.
What changed, and why
Our standards are revised after every job, and the revision reaches you rather than staying in our files.
- Quarterly business reviews carry the changes: a finding on another site that applies to yours, a standard we tightened, a platform we moved toward or away from, a license that changed terms.
- The annual assessment re-plans rather than repeats, and re-verifies the restore procedure with your staff.
- Pitfalls are recorded with the incident that caused them and designed out of the next build, so the same mistake is not made twice on anyone's network.
- Corrections are issued in writing as dated revisions to the same document. A wrong diagnosis is said to be wrong, by us, before you find out.
- Tooling is re-evaluated on the same cycle, including the AI assistants described above, and anything retired leaves with a record of why.
Questions about working with us
Do I have to buy anything after the assessment?
No. The assessment is a fixed-fee engagement and the written report is yours to keep regardless of what you decide. Hardware quantity on the resulting quotation may be zero. When we do recommend purchases, each line is marked required, recommended or optional so you can remove items without renegotiating the rest.
What happens if we want to leave?
Your data, tenant, domains, Global Administrator credentials and the documentation of what is installed were yours all along. On request, we promptly return any remaining data, credentials and administrative access, hand the current documentation to whoever follows us, and remove our own access. Hardware and licenses you bought stay yours. Our scripts, templates and custom configurations stay ours and are not licensed for use after the service ends.
Is after-hours support included?
After-hours, weekend and emergency work is available by arrangement and is billed separately from the monthly fee. Our targets are a four-hour callback after hours and a one-hour response for emergencies such as a critical outage or security incident. We do not advertise a blanket round-the-clock promise.
Who actually does the work?
Our own staff: systems administrators, network specialists, technicians and software developers. They do and check the work to house standards set by our licensed Professional Engineer, who takes the questions that need a licensed engineer. When a job calls for a specialist, we bring in a vetted partner under our standards; any subcontractor on your engagement is disclosed and approved in writing first. You keep one accountable contact.
What do you need from us to get started?
A named Authorized Contact, a date for the assessment visit, and whatever documentation and credentials you already have; missing records are normal and part of what the assessment produces. If you have an existing IT provider, a short written authorization lets us request configurations and domain access from them. Everything else is gathered on the visit.
Can you help with compliance such as HIPAA, CJIS or PCI?
Yes, as advisory assistance: segmented network design, security configuration, awareness-training coordination and records-retention alignment. We do not issue formal compliance attestations, certifications or legal opinions. For Texas local governments we also enroll staff and officials in the state-required annual cybersecurity training and track completion.
Start with a written assessment.
Tell us what you have and what is not working. Someone from our team, not a salesperson, replies within one business day by email or phone, and brings in our engineer when your request needs one. The assessment report is yours to keep whether or not you buy anything.