Westfiled Stratford City project is the fifth major Olympics-related structured cabling project that British based, Brand-Rex has won, with its high performance copper and fibre infrastructure products. The company says that this win now confirms Brand-Rex as the de-facto supplier of choice for Olympics projects.
“This is a prestigious and exciting win for Dimension Data and Brand-Rex,” says Paul Lines, CEO Brand-Rex. “To be confirmed as the ideal infrastructure solution to underpin the complex technology required in a project this size, together with four other major Olympics projects that will all be part of the world stage in 2012, demonstrates the quality, reliability and competitiveness of our infrastructure products. Our dedicated Olympics Team together with our leading installation partners are on track to secure the majority of the Olympics business.”
The innovative design of the shopping centre complex creates different retail zones spread over three levels and includes a beautifully designed 24 hour lifestyle street to create interest and functionality. Costing £1.45 billion the centre also connects the two transportation hubs of Stratford Regional Station and Stratford International Station. As one of the most environmentally efficient retail centres in the UK, Westfield Stratford City has been designed to achieve excellence in sustainability with some of the most stringent guidelines imposed on its construction and on-going management, and this extends to the high performance structured cabling installation.
The technological infrastructure required to support a project of this size is enormous and complex. “There will be technology in use throughout the building,” says Kari Baden, MD at Dimension Data. CCTV, Access Control, BMS, WiFi, car parking to electronic tills, High Definition Digital Signage, Footfall – and even identity tags to prevent children getting lost! This is going to be a hardworking completely utilised, fully integrated network and needs a robust, high performance infrastructure to support it.”
Underpinning the infrastructure is a primary and secondary optical fibre structured cabling backbone that connects every telecommunications room to the primary equipment rooms as well as linking in external services from telecoms providers, mobile carriers and satellite equipment.
The Brand-Rex air blown fibre solution Blolite+ was chosen specifically for the project due to its flexibility and scalability, allowing additional connectivity for further services and devices in the future without disruption. The unique Blolite+ system uses compressed air to blow specially coated optical fibres into pre-installed plastic tubes, microducts, providing a flexible and cost effective method of installing optical fibre with unlimited future-proofing potential.
With two mirrored data centres and 77 separate comms rooms this is a challenging project. Each of the comms rooms will be pre-manufactured, provisioned and tested off-site by Dimension Data before being craned into position at the appropriate point in the build process. Weighing over one ton each, and measuring 6m x 1m x 2.1m high, they contain three fully equipped comms cabinets together with the necessary structured cabling, air conditioning, power and lighting in a protected unit that is IP55 rated to prevent access of dust and water.
Brand-Rex 10GPlus Cat6a structured cabling capable of delivering speeds of 10 Gb/sec will be used together with the Blolite+ fibre optic backbones to deliver the fixed infrastructure to the whole of the shopping complex and commercial areas. In addition, the Brand-Rex infrastructure will support a 700 access node wireless network giving public access within the shopping complex. “This is a showcase site for London and we are delighted that Brand-Rex products were chosen for their reliability, performance and flexibility,” says Lines. “Blolite+ optical fibre together with10GPlus copper cabling provides a high performance, cost effective and robust solution for all today’s integrated communication needs.”