Case Study: British Gas PLC
Customer: SIS Ltd
Location: Thames Valley Park, Reading
Requirements: Installation of 3000 Cat5E outlets, fibre optic and Telephony backbone cabling.
Equipment: Krone Systimax Cat5E, Krone Patching Frames, OM1 fibre optic cabling.
OVERVIEW
To install, terminate, test and label 3000 Cat5E outlets with fibre optic backbones and telephony multicore links within this revolutionary high tech new structure for British Gas. The building consists of two finger shaped buildings connected with a large centre atrium between them. Each of the finger shaped wings contains 3 floors. A comms room was located on the middle floor of each wing and then joined via backbone cabling. The length of each finger is approximately 80 metres long and 20 metres wide.
The building is located on the Thames Valley Business Park and at the rear of the building lays the Thames Valley Park Nature Reserve and the River Thames.
THE MISSION
We were required to install a 4 way Cat5E outlet box beneath the false flooring creating a grid system where each unit was approximately 2 meters apart from the next distribution box throughout the 6 floors of the two wings. The fibre optic backbones were run diversely through the 1st and ground floors in order to create resilient connectivity between the remote comms rooms. The Cat5E cabling was all supplied with LSZH insulation and contained on 500 metre drums. This in itself created an engineering problem for us trying to install the cables, in any decent quantities at a time, due to the size and weight of the cable drums. This was overcome with the use of lots of heavy duty cable jacks some scaffolding poles and some good old fashioned human grunt to lift them into place. We installed around 300 of these drums of cable onto this project totalling almost 100 miles of cable.
CONCLUSION
The project took place over a 12 week period and completed within the project timescales. LAN Platform were further contracted to complete additional projects within British Gas's existing adjacent 3 buildings on the Thames Valley Park Campus upon completion of this project.
