From the February 2003
Issue
Navy secures healthcare network
Enclosures showcase data center
CH2M HILL engineers a structured solution for higher speeds and future growth.
by Carol Everett Oliver
You know a commercial business campus is immense when it has its own phone exchange. When CH2M HILL, a multinational professional
services firm, moved its four Denver-area operations to a new campus, it also consolidated several thousand direct-dial numbers into a new exchange, procured exclusively for its use. In addition, to assure high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity, Adam Marsh, the firm’s senior systems analyst for LAN and cable plant technologies, led the implementation of an advanced structured-cabling system to handle the firm’s complex LAN requirements.
“In a down economy, the best way to manage costs and help protect the firm from future recessions is with office consolidation,” notes Marsh, who oversaw the network system from design to implementation. “The majority of our employees reside in local regional offices where our engineers can be located near their customers. The campus contains the firm’s main data center that supports the applications our end-users use worldwide. We needed an efficient, high-performance, structured-cabling system to support the firm’s information-technology mission.”
CH2M HILL is Colorado’s largest employee-owned company, providing engineering, construction, operations and related technical services to both public and private clients. The firm’s work is concentrated in the areas of water, energy, environment, transportation, telecommunications, construction and industrial facilities.
The new 17-acre campus, which includes three office buildings, and space to build two additional buildings, houses 1,200 Denver employees. As the corporate headquarters, the Denver campus is the technical support center for 10,500 employees in 165 offices worldwide.
The new campus consolidates four previous locations, which oversee worldwide engineering and construction-management services, a new technology solutions center, as well as OMI (Operations Management International), a CH2M HILL company that specializes in operations and maintenance services.
For the high-speed, high-bandwidth connectivity of the campus, Marsh and IDC, a CH2M HILL company, designed a telecommunications infrastructure that included redundant optical fiber between each building, optical fiber and high-speed Category 6e for the buildings’ riser cabling, and dual Category 6 cabling to each desk. A Category 3 cabling system interconnects each building for the telephone connectivity.
Ortronics and Berk-Tek NetClearGT2 Category 6 and NetClearGT3 Category 6e high-performance, end-to-end, structured-cabling systems were the choices for the network, which includes cable, fiber-distribution cabinets, patch panels, patch cords and workstation outlets.
A team approach
Selecting the installation team was a collaborative effort between CH2M HILL and The Weitz Co., the general contractor for the project. Weitz was responsible for bringing a low-voltage contractor on board and performing the construction management. Since the selection of an installation contractor was viewed as mission critical, Weitz involved CH2M HILL and IDC heavily at all levels of the bid and construction process.
“The design documents were very specific with the rack layout and products to be used,” notes Marsh. “CH2M HILL has had Ortronics as a company standard at its domestic U.S. locations for five years, so the bidding installers had to make sure their bid corresponded with our distinct requirements.”
The Weitz Co., with the approval of Marsh, selected Netversant Denver, a nationally certified installer, to provide the product warranty. Netversant was given a tight construction timeframe, with the bid for the first two buildings approved in January 2002.
The cabling was pulled in March and April 2002 for the first building, which houses OMI and CH2M HILL’s regional engineering office. The first building, known as the “south” building, was completed in late July. The second building, known as the “west” building, housing the corporate offices, was completed in late October.
During construction, CH2M HILL’s facilities team decided to add another building to house additional staff and also for the new technology solution center, a lab and networking environment meant to showcase technology services related to telecommunications and networking.
“An important factor in meeting the tight timeframes for this project was the ability of the stocking distributor, Graybar, to have necessary cable and connectivity products available when we needed them,” states Marsh. “Graybar often had product onsite within five days.”
installing the cable
The first phase of the project was laying the cable and conduit for the outside plant backbone. This consisted of an outer and inner conduit ring throughout the complex, which connected all the buildings. There are four 4-inch conduits, two of which were filled with three 1-1/4-inch innerducts for the fiber and copper. The other two conduits were placed for future use.
Outside plant-rated Category 3 ran between the buildings to connect the voice POTS and T-1 lines from the outside service providers, and also private services between buildings. The campus maintains two points-of-service locations, with telecommunications buildouts from three separate telecom providers to ensure continuous connectivity to the outside world.
The campus fiber backbone for both data and voice between the buildings consists of Berk-Tek’s Adventum cable, an outside-rated optical fiber that is plenum rated to avoid the 50-foot transition requirement from the National Electrical Code. A composite of 24 strands of 50-micron multimode and 24 strands of singlemode encased in one jacket was specified. Between each building, one composite cable was run through both the inner and outer conduit rings to maintain route diversity.
“The use of multimode and singlemode fiber within the campus backbone allows us to use low-cost equipment and multimode optical fiber now,” Marsh notes, “while providing our future bandwidth requirements served by singlemode optical fiber.”
The hub of the campus network, including the corporate data center, is located in the west building. This room is known as the telecom campus distributor (TCD), and encompasses the backbone cabling between the buildings, as well as the server-farm connections. There are rows of cable-management racks in the main TCD that house all the cable distribution panels, and switches for the entire data center and the firm-wide WAN equipment, including routers, switches and the multiple DS-3 connections. The racks also contain all the cable-distribution panels for intrabuilding and interbuilding connections, and the telephone adjunct for a future buildout of a wireless LAN gateway connection to the PBX.
The corporate data center contains its own servers enclosed in 27 cabinets. All the cabling is overhead on ladder racks, with separate power and HVAC systems running underneath the raised floor. Each cabinet is connected with 12 strands of mulitmode fiber and 12 Category 6e copper-based connections. The materials used in the cabinet and TCD end consist of Ortronics Clarity6 patch panels and ORMMAC fiber-distribution cabinets.
Under the floor in the data center are Ortronics Jak-Paks with Clarity6 TracJack modules, which allow data connections to free-standing computers in the center when needed.
The pathways and space design consisted of each building having a single telecommunications building distributor. These are linked to the TCD via outside plant conduits and are also connected to the telecommunications floor distributors located within each building. CH2M HILL’s network has one closet per each of the 13 floors.
“All our pathways are oversized so that we can prepare to go fiber to the desk when it becomes economically justifiable to us,” states Marsh. “We can add more fiber in the risers or between buildings easily at that time.”
Currently, there are innerducts between the floors for the current fiber-optic cable and for future fiber. For interfloor connectivity, 48 strands of Berk-Tek’s 50-micron fiber and 24 connections of LANmark-2000 (enhanced Category 6e) for data were pulled. The voice backbone between floors consists of multiple 100-pair Category 3 riser cables. All four horizontal station pairs are cross connected into the riser, resulting in 900 to 1,200 pairs of Category 3 riser running between floors.
There are four 8-foot equipment racks per closet. “Making each of the closets standardized made it easy for the administration of future moves, adds and changes, and also provided enough space for a future expansion,” notes Marsh. In fact, one rack is completely empty to allow for future electronics and cabinets to support fiber to the desktop. The second rack is for current fiber backbone connections.
The fiber-optic cable is terminated into ORMMACs fiber-distribution panels. The third rack houses the electronics, as well as Clarity6 patch panels and patch cords for terminating the Category 6e backbone. The fourth rack houses the Category 6 patch panels and patch cords for the horizontal distribution of the LANmark-1000 Category 6 to the desk.
With both fiber and high-speed enhanced Category 6 and 6e, CH2M HILL can run 10 gigabits over the backbone and have enough copper-based lines available for piping additional T-1s or DSL throughout the building, if necessary. From each closet, Category 6 is run to the more than 5,000 workstation outlets.
different configurations
“If we ran Category 6e to the desk, it would have cost us a lot more than running Category 6,” Marsh says. “Although the Category 6e certainly has more headroom, standard Category 6 allows one gigabit to the desk, which is more than we need in the foreseeable future.
“The modularity of the patch panels and outlets gave us the option to create many different outlet configurations, depending on the location,” he adds. In addition to the office areas, which included 70% modular cubicles and 30% hard walls, there were other unique termination locations, including conference table connections, a conference center, cafeteria outlets and reception areas.
The default outlet for the offices and cubicles included one Category 3 cable for voice and two Category 6 data connections. Series II faceplates were used for hard-wall offices and TracJacks for cubicles. Conference rooms, the cafeteria and the training center also were hooked up to the network with multiple voice and data outlets.
To ensure maximum network performance, with an installed channel performance 4 dB above the newly ratified Category 6 TIA/EIA-568B.2-1 standard, the installed network was verified with the Fluke DSP 4300 tester. “We performed link testing at every port at the desk and in the closet with the field tester. Everything tested out beyond the specifications in the standards for a CAT 6 and enhanced CAT 6,” says Mike McCart, project foreman for Netversant Denver.
“We feel the system should be fast enough and robust enough to suffice our needs for the next 10 years,” Marsh says. “Although we did not install fiber to the desk, our backbone and termination equipment will support future expansion of fiber to the desk, should it become economical.”
When all was tallied, the entire cable plant consisted of three miles of fiber-optic cable, 232 miles of combined Category 6/6e and 99 miles of Category 3 voice cabling to more than 7,000 jacks. “Because of the scope of this installation, precise pre-planning, combined with timely product delivery, was crucial to the success of this infrastructure,” states Marsh. “When it comes to pre-planning cabling and network capacity, too much is never enough.”
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Oliver is the principal of Everett Communications, Medway, MA, and a freelance writer for the cabling industry.
Ortronics: Around the world
Ortronics, headquartered in New London, CT, is a global provider of commercial Category 5e and 6 high-performance, high-capacity enhanced frequency channels, fiber-optic and residential/small commercial structured-cabling systems. The company offers a range of connectivity products, including patch panels, interface cords, workstation outlets, cable-management systems, 110 cross-connect systems and more. Ortronics offers engineering and technical support, systems planning, training programs, and a 25-year extended products warranty and applications-assurance warranty program.
With sales offices in the United States, Canada, Central/South America, Europe and Asia, and production facilities in the United States, Mexico and Asia, Ortronics is ISO 9001 registered and an active member of BICSI, TIA/EIA, ISO and other industry standards groups.
Ortronics is part of the Legrand group, Limoges, France, one of the world’s leading producers of wiring devices, with sales of more than $2.7 billion in 2001, operations in 51 countries and 28,000 employees worldwide. Ortronics serves as the global Legrand Center of Competence for fiber-optic and copper networking solutions, providing design and technical support for performance-rated network products, end-to-end solutions, vendor and internal qualification testing, and standards compliance.
Thomas Goetter was appointed president of Ortronics in June 2002 and brings more than 20 years of experience in sales, marketing, engineering and operations to the company. Prior to his appointment, Goetter spent 13 years with Wiremold, a provider of cable-management solutions, headquartered in West Hartford, CT. He holds a bachelor of science degree in structural engineering from the University of Wisconsin, and a masters degree in business administration from the University of West Virginia.