The Client
Three Snowhill is a prominent and iconic Grade A office building that completes the 1m sq. ft new business quarter at Snowhill. A landmark and unique design, Three Snowhill is recognisably of the same family as the award winning One and Two Snowhill and the Gateway to Birmingham’s thriving Central Business District.
The Challenge
The building management team at Three Snowhill had multiple users on separate ADSL broadband connections. Bandwidth restrictions triggered debilitating performance issues, which created a fragmented team and caused enormous frustration. The poor broadband performance meant the team was frequently unable to view CCTV cameras, speak to each other on internal lines or even access the simplest applications such as email.
Our Solution
To tackle broadband connection and bandwidth issues at Three Snowhill, Modern Networks installed a dedicated fibre-optic leased line. The new leased line provides 100Mb symmetrical broadband connection into the building’s BMS (Building Management System) room. Typically, a BMS consists of one of more control panels installed within a plant room which are wired to various sensors, valves and switches within the building. This allows the BMS to monitor and control the building’s heating, ventilation, air conditioning and energy usage.
Additionally, Modern Network designed a new local area network (LAN), which our structured cabling partner Dalcom Services Ltd installed. We agreed upon a Cat 6A system that offers less cross talk (electronic interference), reduced signal loss and provides greater frequency bandwidth. The existing BMS fibre backbone enabled us to connect all members of the building management team and is designed to meet current and future IT service requirements.
A properly designed and installed structure cabling system delivers predictable performance and the flexibility to accommodate change and growth. It maximises system availability for users, provides redundancy and future proofs the usability of the cabling system.
Challenges
For a modern building like Three Snowhill there was insufficient routing for an unshielded communication solution. Fortunately, the shielded solution that Modern Networks designed enabled the communications cabling to run in parallel with the mains voltage without being affected by electromagnetic interference (EMI).
Twisted pair cabling consists of two conductors of a single circuit twisted together to help reduce electromagnetic interference (EMI). EMI can come from many different sources such as generators, air conditioning units, and even office lights and printers. Unshielded cables reduce some interference. However, properly installed high-quality shielded cables automatically suppress interference and help ensure data integrity and high-speed performance.
The Results
One of the biggest benefits of the work done by Modern Networks is the time saved by efficient distribution of bandwidth. Previously the building management team would receive Kbps (Kilobits per second of data) now they have access to Mbps (Megabits per second). The difference is 1 Mbps is 1000 times faster than 1 Kbps.
Three Snowhill is a flagship building. Today its building management team have high speed Internet connectivity to computers, CCTV and wireless access points (WAP), which means greater productivity, efficiency and reduced costs. Additionally, much of the frustration experienced by the team daily due to poor connectivity has now been mitigated, making everyone happier.