Rendcomb College in the Cotswolds is listed by English Heritage. These strict regulations created their own unique challenges.

Rendcomb College is a traditional English fee paying school, located deep in the Cotswolds. The college houses some 400 students both as boarders and day pupils.

When Rendcomb approached Branch to tender for the provision of an advanced switched gigabit optical network, spanning ten key listed buildings to upgrade their ICT provision, the college knew it was always going to be a challenge with no existing campus interconnectivity.

Without an existing duct structure and with English Heritage to consider Branch elected to handle the civil engineering directly. These works involved creating new pathways across the beautifully manicured grounds, crossing a public road and a Grade II listed bridge.

After extensive negotiations with English Heritage and an extended CAD planning and modeling period Branch proposed an innovative solution to the key essential routeway over the listed bridge. Branch designed and commissioned a new concrete hollow kerb cast to allow the 4 way Blo-Duct to pass through without spoiling the aesthetic beauty of the listed bridge.

After a period of evaluation and visits to reference
sites where Branch had successfully installed
similar futureproof blown fibre systems, the college specified the Blo-Lite system from Brand-Rex with CAT5E UTP providing 100 Mbps desktop
connectivity as their preferred solution.

The fibre was specified as 50um for its increased
bandwidth and capability to support Gigabit Ethernet over the extended link lengths dictated by the campus layout.

This decision was based on the ability to add or upgrade the fibre count or grade without additional works outside of the communications closets, which would require further Heritage permissions. Futureproofing was designed into the system from the outset with four Blo-Tubes installed to each location to cater for planned
future expansion, and in some instances pre-terminated dark fibre for disaster recovery.

Branch was successful in the competitive tendering process and subsequently awarded the active equipment consultancy and supply. After evaluating all of the available solutions, the HP Pro-Curve Gigabit range was selected as the best compromise between price and performance. Wireless access points were also specified and installed in public areas of the campus.

Cooper B Line Access Racks were selected as best suited to withstand the rigors of the busy public environment. These were then delicately installed across the campus in accordance with English Heritage’s guidelines.

The installation and testing of the optical network and CAT5E flood wiring were carried out in a very tight timescale during the College’s summer holiday period. This ensured compliance with key Health and Safety risk assessments and minimised the impact of these works on the students.

After testing in both directions at both 850 and 1300nm a full 25 Year Millennium warranty was issued to cover the infrastructure, further confirming both Branch’s and Brand-Rex’s commitment to quality and longevity.

A comprehensive package of CAD based as installed drawings, patching schedules and test results was created and issued as both hard and soft copies in addition to the 25-year Brand-Rex system warranty.

Technical overview
> Backbone
Brand-Rex 50um blown fibre backbone
Provision of W&Q Access Racks throughout the site
Dual wavelength & direction testing
Full 25 year optical warranty issued

> Active Equipment
HP Pro-Curve gigabit core switches
Wireless access points installed in public areas

> Structured Cabling
CAT5E flood wiring
Full Class D testing

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February 2010
Branch Technologies Ltd is pleased to announce the completion of the latest phase of an ongoing project for Cable & Wireless. The project; commissioned by Cable & Wireless on behalf of Royal and Sun Alliance was to implement and enhance their adoption of VoIP for their Pearl Centre campus near Peterborough. The installation was designed to address the requirements of 800 staff, via a 2600 point CAT6 UTP Brand-Rex installation. Spread over two buildings, supporting four new comms rooms (all built by Branch) the implementation featured OM3 50/125 Multimode fibre links x 240 between all comms rooms and server room; all with built in resilience and failover for the Cisco 6500 equipment.

Colin Pyatt of the RSA stated: “I pass on my thanks to you [Branch Technologies] and your teams for their efforts in the delivery at Peterborough. All parties involved have commented on the professionalism and exemplary attitude and approach displayed throughout the project by all Branch staff. This certainly gives RSA a high degree of confidence for forthcoming projects…”

Kelvin Ager, Managing Director of Branch Technologies commented: “Delivering exactly what the customer needs, within an agreed brief, to budget and on time is fundamental to the ethos of Branch Technologies”. “We now look forward to commencing the next C&W / RSA project and to the opportunity to promote Branch’s additional Realtime Environmental Management solution” (www.remprobe.com) he added.