One question that always arises has to do with why people seemingly avoid addressing issues, since neglecting them will only create problems for customers. In the particular case I'm writing about today, what I found out made sense, but it doesn't excuse the parties involved, simply because they didn't want to deal with the real issue head on.
Nearly a year ago we handed over conduit requirements to the architect, project manager and the jobsite foreman, for the job of connecting four buildings together. To date: no conduits installed, and now some reactions make the job real interesting--since all the copper is being removed that feeds the campus and cell tower operated by the tenant.
The vault that houses electrical and communications feeds are sometimes a complicated mess when there is new construction. Requirements change with building codes over time, and to exacerbate existing problems, all the existing copper facilities were installed in a conduit bank that was at an improper depth, and the bend radius wasn't a sweeping 90 but more like some twisted rendition of someone playing a trombone.
Outside the main campus vault is a core pull box for all the campus communications that ties from the vault and into Building A's meter room. This conduit leg was also damaged and improperly installed 20+ years ago. The other three buildings have conduit going to the communications pull box, and one conduit feeding building A was damaged when a water main was excavated and repaired. Building B's conduit feeds audio and telephone pairs along with pairs for multiple T1s to a cell tower on the property. Buildings B, C and D conduit feeds are being cut and all existing copper removed.
The underground feed for the outside plant has been damaged on at least two prior occasions and it too is being removed/abandoned. The pull box has damage and it too must be repaired but not with cabling inside the pull box. Instead, all wiring will be pulled back and removed for the pull box and conduit repairs, and then a new direct conduit will be added from Building A to the communications pull box serving the entire campus.
An engineering firm enters into the meetings and recommends that two new feeds from the vault enter into the communications pull box serving the entire campus (private facilities) and then continue on to Building D. Since everything in the pull box must be cut and retracted, it's seemingly ill advised to attempt any temporary fix.
Call it luck but the Comcast service enters into Building D via a direct buried cable along the property edge. This service remains unaffected by any construction. In Building D we installed 24 fiber pairs from the cable entrance and extended this "switch closet" to the other end of the building, to another switch closet, and aggregated some fiber pairs in the LAN switches. All fiber pairs terminate on modular patch panels in both closets.
We've measured two new fiber cables for installation from Buildings C and D back to building A. Once we are given instructions to proceed, these fiber pairs will terminate in Building D and we will simply patch in pairs as we need them and carry the pairs to the other end of the building and patch these into to the fiber transceivers.
These two fiber cables cannot be installed until the conduit is repaired, properly re-routed and buried. There will be down time for Buildings A, B and C. We've installed an IP-PBX in Building D using SIP trunks, and will eventually have Verizon fiber installed once the conduit and pull box work is completed.
The copper cables that we will also install for audio, analog and alarm services will be another challenge. We've changed the design of the two fiber cables to be ruggedized since the pull box will share access to both public and private facilities.
Addressing campus infrastructure means first that the parties involved must realize they are in a campus environment and then recognize that disparate systems and cabling isn't a solution for moving forward. The only real copper being installed is by Comcast in dedicated conduit, and of course some minor copper pairs for internal use. The significant change is the fiber from Verizon and no underground or buried copper.
The gap of understanding is minor compared to the gap of reasoning used in this construction process. The new power feed is about the final milestone and hence the reason the architect, project manager and site foreman ignored the communications requirements until now. Now that there will be notable downtime there is concern and finally action. Sometimes the process simply has to fail, and whether or not it improves remains to be seen.
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