Public spirited

“People say Cat 6 cable is pretty versatile but this is the first time we have installed it for television. It works fine, too; we installed a satellite dish equipped with live news broadcast capability on the roof for Sky News and you can connect a tv into any one of 5800 RJ-45 outlets on six floors!”

From the words of Mark Lewis, director of Graham Maule Electrical Contractors, it’s clear that we’re talking about a pretty unusual cabling installation. Naturally the system handles voice and data as well as television, but versatility is not the only name of the game.

“Flexibility and resilience are also key factors in the design,” continues Lewis. “For horizontal cabling ADC Krone’s zero bit error TrueNet Cat 6 cabling solution was specified to provide maximum headroom for bandwidth-hungry applications now and in the future, while 50/125 tight buffered fibre with SC connections was the choice for the backbone. There are 24 cores of fibre to APFII advanced patch frames on each floor but, for maximum diversity, these are routed separately on each side of the building using 12-core tubes in two different cable tray risers.

“To further mitigate the risk from unforeseen damage these are backed up by 24 Cat 6 cables to create an alternative copper ‘backbone’, which also provide capacity if other users move into the building and require their own networks. It provides all the options, loads of scope and maximum flexibility,” Lewis adds.

An impressive specification, but one that is entirely appropriate for the new headquarters for key government departments in Birmingham. Known as the Government Office for the West Midlands and reporting directly to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the building brings together people and departments housed previously at three separate sites.

For the past year it has been the chief preoccupation of Sally Coldrick, ICT manager for the organisation. “My task was to provide the entire communications and networking infrastructure for the new headquarters,” she explains. “Starting with bare floors and empty rooms in a newly refurbished building gave me a clean sheet but the remit was extremely demanding nevertheless. Television was a key requirement – and not, I might add, for the staff restroom!

“Access to all news channels is vital for several departments here: the Regional Resilience Team who respond to civil contingencies need news on tap, as do our Public Health colleagues for their emergency planning role. In addition, the Government News Network monitors seven channels routinely.”

With six months of cabling work complete and the offices furnished, some 470 people are moving into 5 St Philips Place, as their new home is known. The building is located in the financial district of England’s second city and has a distinguished classical facade. Venerable it may be on the outside but internally it has been gutted and refitted to the highest standards with new infrastructure.

“We bought it as a shell and had it refurbished to our own specification,” continues Coldrick. “The Cat 6 cabling is flood-wired on all floors and serves an IT system connected to the Government Secure Intranet, based on SAN (storage area networking) instead of file servers, with Dell GX270 workstations and 17-inch flat-screen monitors at every desk. An Avaya telephone switch and fully-digital handsets handle speech communications.”

Big bandwidth

Everything has been designed for highest efficiency and lowest total-life cost, she adds, which is why so much emphasis has been placed on future-proofing and ease of reconfiguration. The big bandwidth will facilitate their move towards electronic document storage and a paperless office, while the ability to route voice and data to any part of the building means that teams can be redeployed rapidly in response to changing circumstances.

But what about the actual installation? According to Coldrick, everything has gone smoothly, with all deadlines met and a service that could not have been more helpful. “Hats off to GM Electrical, they have done a sterling job,” she declares. “We are extremely happy with their work – and no, they don’t pay me to say this! It all boils down to teamwork, close collaboration and the fact that they understand how government works.”

On this point Mark Lewis would certainly not disagree, since his company has plenty of experience cabling government offices, including one high-profile building for the security services in London. “It’s attractive work,” he explains, “and installers fight for contracts like this. We are fortunate in having Niall Boden of the Consultancy Corporation on our team to lay down quality standards and an overall specification. The standards demanded by the government are extremely high and not everyone is equal to the task. We consider ourselves specialists in this kind of work and I can say with confidence that you’re unlikely to find neater workmanship. This extends to behind the comms cabinets and I understand that the client is sending people from London to inspect the quality of our work and specifying the same standard for other government buildings.”

Although margins are tight, Lewis argues that cost cutting is pointless and that at the end of the day, you get exactly what you pay for. The new CL compact line jack is a prime example where the best works out the cheapest, he states. Its electrical performance, which exceeds the Cat 6 specification, makes an ideal match for the Cat 6 cable used. The CL jack is ideally suited to shallow backboxes and trunking and is compatible with the existing range of Cat 5e adapters, faceplates, floor boxes and patch panels. This is their first installation using the compact CL jack, which is now their standard choice for flexibility and reliability.

Another example of investing to save time – hence money – is the TrueNet KM8 patch panels used, which eliminate virtually all termination errors with their built-in system for wire management at the point of termination. The design ensures that each wire follows an exactly prescribed path, which maintains all of the necessary electrical parameters, and thereby assures that the termination stays perfectly in spec. “Using these KM8 patch panels means we greatly reduce fault finding and re-work time,” declares Lewis.

“If you want to win repeat business, only the best is good enough,” he concludes. “I listen to what the lads tell me and they always complain when they have to work with low quality gear; the work takes longer when they fiddle around with substandard materials. When you are working across the country too, any callbacks to rectify installation problems can wipe out the profit, so for all these reasons using top quality products is well worth the extra cost.”