Laying cables in empty conduits is in most cases pointless anyway: an empty conduit that is already "full" with the initial installation does not deserve its name because it does not fulfill its purpose. One might as well have taken a protective conduit right from the start. The latter, on the other hand, I indeed see bringing the most benefit on the ground. In the crime scene picture, I would be more tempted to pull the ears of the guy responsible for the freestyle cable routing. An "full empty conduit" only makes sense to me for data cables, since this also involves the aspect of replaceability due to expected increased requirements. Even Category 7 is still copper; in ten years many places will only smile about it and call it a data DDR highway. The best empty conduit, in my opinion, is one that justifies its name by running empty parallel next to a protective conduit that is already concretely planned to be "inhabited." Compared to today’s usual general contractor construction specification, however, that is wishful thinking. In this respect, I agree with my predecessor in the conclusion.