Kings College London

Overview

Kings College London (KCL) is ranked in the top 10 UK universities and is said to be the fourth oldest university institution in England.

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It is now home to around 40,000 students and employees spread across six campuses on the north bank of the River Thames.

In 2018, HCL’s Faculty of Natural, Mathematical & Engineering Sciences determined that additional space would be needed to accommodate its growing student population. It was decided that the under-utilised spaces at the Quadrangle and Southwest Block within the Strand Campus would be an ideal new home for the expanding faculty. A refurbishment programme to re-imagine the space and provide the requirements for modern workspaces to support onsite teaching and research programmes was agreed, with work starting in June 2021.

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Installation Technology has been delivering IT infrastructure projects into KCL for over 15 years. In September 2021 Installation Technology was appointed by Berryman Electrical to install the new fixed and wireless Local Area Network (LAN) infrastructure as part of the refurbishment project. We were chosen for our detailed site knowledge and reputation for delivering to the highest industry accredited standards, on time and to budget.

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The scope of our project covered the implementation of fixed and wireless access points with fibre backhaul to enable connectivity within both buildings for use by lecturers, students and connected engineering apparatus.

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In the Quadrangle alone 3,000 square metres were redeveloped to create a new home for the Faculty, providing cutting edge laboratories and workspaces.

Approach

Installation Technology worked closely with the Berryman Electrical to create a Project Implementation Plan (PIP) to deliver the project within the required timescales, synchronised with all of the other activities taking place on site.

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To support the PIP we agreed a robust governance process which encouraged collaboration, maintained the flow of information and ensured the project remained on time and to budget.

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Local Health and Safety procedures were absorbed within Installation Technology best practices to provide a safe work environment for employees and other sub-contractors on site.‍

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Solution

In total, Installation Technology installed 7.7km of CAT6 ethernet cable and connected over 750 wall outlets to enable fixed connections for computers and specialist laboratory equipment. We installed wireless access points throughout each floor, along corridors and stairways to provide ubiquitous coverage throughout the Faculty ensuring reliable high-capacity connectivity for staff, students and Wi-Fi enabled equipment.

The fixed and wireless access points were connected back to network switches housed within a Communication Room on each floor. To provide resiliency, we installed diversely routed fibre optic cable from each Communications Room to KCL’s on-site telecommunications hub.

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All work was carried out by our qualified engineers to industry recognised and site-specific standards, and managed by our PRINCE2 accredited project manager.

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As part of the final checks for the buildings, it was discovered that an air conditioning pipe had leaked onto the active equipment. It was not possible to determine how much water had penetrated the units so all of the network switches and terminated modules needed to be replaced.

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We invoked our ISO accredited Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) plan and in line with our process, an emergency meeting was chaired by our Major Incidents Manager and a task force set-up.  All of our site-based engineers were re-directed to the incident, augmented with additional resource to deliver the resolution plan. Within 48 hours we had doubled our workforce and introduced out of hours working to ensure the original deadline was met despite this last minute setback.