CASE STUDY
State of the art campus seeks worthy IT infrastructure Bournville College Installation
When Bournville College opened its new £66m campus, it needed an IT network infrastructure that was worthy of the development.
Introduction September 2011 saw a landmark event in the history of Bournville College when it opened its brand new £66m state-of-the-art campus in Longbridge. Having a high performance IT network infrastructure was a necessity for students and staff and in order to achieve this, the College chose a future- proof cabling solution from Brand-Rex.
New Development Having decided to move from the Bristol Road South site, and after nearly seven years in development, in September 2011 Bournville College relocated to a brand new state-of-the-art campus in Longbridge. The new campus has capacity for 15,000 students and spans 4.2 acres of land, providing facilities that are among the best in the UK. It is part of the £1bn regeneration project of the former MG Rover works and the first phase of an ambitious redevelopment plan for Longbridge. The campus’s main spine building
consists of six floors and four additional buildings which are connected to the spine. Its Learning Resource Centre, located at the heart of the College, offers over 300 computers with the latest software, thousands of books on all subjects, e-learning materials and Wi-Fi Internet access.
Look to the Future At the early stages of the development the IT and networking team recognised the need for a high quality IT network to serve those on campus. Taz Hussain, network manager at Bournville College, explains, “We knew that for the level of technology that the network infrastructure would have to serve, both now and in the future, it was imperative to get the specification and installation right first time. We also had the opportunity to install the best possible system while the campus was being built.” Bournville College is a truly
multimedia environment and the chosen system would need to support a variety of applications. Hussain adds, “As well as running voice, data and video conferencing applications, the system
34 NETCOMMS europe Volume III Issue 1 2012 A Brand-Rex cabling solution future-proofed the new campus.
www.netcommseurope.com
would also need to facilitate digital signage, wireless networking, a digital media suite (DMS) and our building management system (BMS) which operates access control, CCTV, lighting, heating and ventilation.” In order to help specify a cabling
infrastructure that could operate these diverse systems, while meeting Bournville College’s future proofing objectives, the services of Darren Hill, ICT consultant with leading design consultancy, LANBuilder, were called on and he soon began work devising a suitable solution.
Meeting the Need Hill went about selecting a solution that offered technical excellence along with a 25-year system warranty. “The money used to develop the building had to be used wisely as it was a one off funding stream,” he commented. “Therefore, we needed a cabling system that could last the building for anything up to 50 years and which could be guaranteed to meet the stated levels of performance for at least 25.”
Hill had worked on previous projects
with Brand-Rex and felt that it would be able to meet the very demanding requirements for a cost effective and high bandwidth system.
the company’s industry leading 10GPlus range would fit the bill. Commenting on the performance
Performance Art After liaising with Craig Urmston, customer relationship manager at Brand-Rex, it was decided that a Category 6A
levels it offers, Urmston said, “10GPlus is a Third Party Testing approved cabling system that not only meets and exceeds the performance outlined in EIA/TIA for Category 6A
, but also
system therefore has unparalleled levels of certification and is manufactured in accordance with ISO 14001 and ISO 9001:2008.” Although there has been some
meets and exceeds requirements in ISO/IEC for Class EA
concern regarding the ability of unshielded twisted pair to achieve 10 Gigabit Ethernet performance due to alien crosstalk issues, 10GPlus has a unique Reuleaux shaped cable that reduces interference from adjacent cables and incorporates very highly balanced pairs. Its performance is also independently verified in 100m length testing for both the cable and the channel configurations. The low levels of electromagnetic interference (EMI) in the College campus also added to the suitability of unshielded cabling.
. The 10GPlus unshielded solution from
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