Once a site is evaluated and stakeholder needs are understood, that information has to become a document other people can approve, budget, and hold the project accountable to. A scope of work (SOW) defines exactly what will and won't be delivered — which rooms, which systems, which capabilities — in specific enough language that there's no ambiguity later about whether something was included.
A bill of materials (BOM) lists every piece of equipment the design requires, with model numbers and quantities, tying the scope to actual cost. A project timeline or milestone schedule breaks the work into phases (design approval, procurement, installation, commissioning, training/handoff) with target dates, which matters enormously in an environment like a courthouse where downtime has to be scheduled around active court proceedings, not just convenience.
A change order is the formal mechanism for handling scope changes after a project has already been approved — if a stakeholder decides mid-project that they now also want overflow-room streaming, that's a change order, not a silent scope expansion (sometimes called scope creep), which is one of the most common ways AV projects go over budget and past deadline without anyone officially deciding to allow it.
Even as a technician rather than a project manager, understanding this document trail matters: it's the reference for what “correct” looks like when troubleshooting or verifying an installation, and it's the paper trail that protects both the Court and the contractor/technician if a dispute arises about what was promised.