LinkT&B Editorial Department
When outsourcing a local LLM deployment, check whether requirements, evaluation and operations have clear owners. Specify deliverables and responsibility for updating documents and models after installation.
Contents
- Deliverables to agree before commissioning
- A running model is not yet an operational service
- A single contact still needs clear responsibilities
- Work from requirements through operational acceptance
- Choose retrieval and fine-tuning for a specific purpose
- Leave an environment that can be handed over
- Discuss your project
Deliverables to agree before commissioning
| Item | What to check | How to assess it |
|---|---|---|
| Requirements | Use cases, data classes and permissions | Document exclusions |
| Evaluation | Test questions, acceptance criteria and results | Retain failures and applicability limits |
| Operation | Updates, recovery, contacts and costs | Assign owners and provide handover material |
A running model is not yet an operational service
A model may answer questions while failing to find company documents, slowing down under concurrent use or lacking an update owner. Requirements, data, infrastructure, interfaces and operations must be checked together.
A single contact still needs clear responsibilities
A coordinated supplier can simplify troubleshooting and changes. It does not eliminate handovers or the need for responsibility boundaries. Define roles for users, information owners, developers and hardware support in agreements and procedures.
When an answer is wrong, inspect the source document, retrieval results, model input and output. Appropriate logs help locate the failure, but sensitive logs also need access controls and retention limits.
Work from requirements through operational acceptance
Define the workflow and information first. Evaluate models and retrieval with real examples, then size the infrastructure for context length and concurrency. Include authentication, document permissions, monitoring, backups and restore procedures in the build.
Use a limited pilot to measure useful work and correction effort. Before release, agree who updates documents and models, who receives incident reports and how the service recovers.
Choose retrieval and fine-tuning for a specific purpose
Retrieval-augmented generation may suit frequently changing documents and evidence-based answers. Fine-tuning may help with formats or task behaviour, but must be evaluated. A larger model does not automatically fix missing retrieval results.
Leave an environment that can be handed over
Document configuration, update processes, evaluation data, licences and recovery. Agree ownership of code and data and the maintenance scope for custom components.
LinkT&B offers a coordinated contact for requirements, deployment, document integration and operations planning, with initial build and ongoing responsibilities specified separately. Local LLM implementation and operation.
Discuss your project
We help select an AI architecture, evaluation process and operating model for your workflows and information requirements.