3C Shared Services

3C Shared Services

Infrastructure Refresh Project

Early in 2017 Playfords successfully secured the tender bid to review and resolve the data cabinet patching issues within 40 different locations across Cambridge city centre sites supported by 3C Shared Services.

During the initial survey it become apparent that the various cabinets hadn’t been maintained for a number of years, with legacy equipment and patching still in place years after old network equipment had been switched to newer but never been removed.

The size of jobs at the various locations differed from 250no data outlets within floor standing cabinets, all the way down to 12no outlets within small wall mounted cabinets.

As part of these works the data cabinets were protected with new UPS units which gave the sites the resilience and also the filtering of the power supply requested by 3C Shared Services.

Cabinet Before and After

A full audit of the existing data cabling was undertaken as part of these works. This was to identify the active equipment within the cabinets to remove the network connections upon the switches in the locations where active equipment had been removed over the years, but the patch leads were left installed increasing the spare capacity on the network switches.

Whilst undertaking these works in the larger data cabinets, PatchSee category 6A patch leads were introduced with coloured clips indicating the different services being delivered from the various ports in the cabinet for a visual indicator. Upon the smaller sites, standard UPT patch leads were installed again using different colours to mirror the visual indicators.

As the works affected numerous end users, they were completed within three different times. These were normal working hours for the smaller sites, whereas the larger sites were either completed over a weekend or an evening depending on the specific site. All works were kept to a tight schedule, tying in with the client who in turn was working closely within the specific sites and keeping them informed with progress.

During the works it become apparent that some of the larger sites’ cabinets weren’t fit for purpose. After discussing this with the client, who could see the benefit of taking our suggestions on board, we were able to replace these cabinets with Mayflex Environ 42U 800mm wide 1000mm deep data cabinets. The data cabinets were generally kept in the same locations but in a number of instances they were moved slightly to fit in with the building’s changing use over the years.

All redundant equipment was taken away from site by our engineers and returned to our office for disposal using a recognised waste carrier to remove the issue from the client.

The project was completed on time to the issued schedule for Playfords and on budget costs stated.

Feedback from the client and our supply chain partners was very positive with all parties stating they would look to use Playfords again.