Case Study: Costain – Preston Highways Project

In-Building Cellular Solution; Audio Visual and LAN Cabling

Costain, the smart infrastructure solutions company, has been awarded a range of new highways contracts in the last quarter, totalling over £150 million. The projects awarded incorporate a mix of services from consultancy and digital technology solutions through to programme management and complex project delivery, demonstrating Costain’s strong capabilities to add value in shaping the UK’s future transport infrastructure.

The contract wins include a major project for Lancashire County Council, which will see Costain deliver Preston Western Distributor Road Project, including the new East West Link Road and the new Cottam Link Road.

The Challenge

To mobilise the project offices a LAN infrastructure with meeting room facilities was required within the main office building and to remote buildings used for security, laboratory, stores and a sleeper unit compound for on site 24/7 operatives.

In addition, it was noted that in-building cellular coverage was poor for both Vodafone and EE networks, both of which were used by Costain and Highways Agency staff.

A basic but flexible VoIP telephony solution was also requested to be deployed also.

The Solution

Costain – Preston Highways Project

Having assessed an existing LAN cabling infrastructure that was not fit for use we stripped out all redundant cabling and old PVC line boxes. Working with Costain’s IT mobilisation teams we designed and installed a new Cat5e network consisting of circa 250 networks sockets all terminated back to 42U comms racks in the main comm room.

The remote buildings were connected via copper ethernet or 160M and 135M multi-mode external fibre links and 12U satellite cabinets were provided for termination panel.
Cat5e LAN cables within the remote buildings were installed to ensure a single LAN was achieved throughout the site.

Meeting Room facilities were supported using existing 55’’ and 65’’ screens and a Projector recovered from a previous project and installed with new Barco Clickshare units for wireless presentation from mobile devices such as Laptop and Tablet.

Brightsign digital signage solutions were installed to support screens in communal areas such as Reception for looping relevant project data, news channels or used as welcome signage to arriving guests.

Using the Gamma Horizon hosted telephony solution we provided Polycom IP phones with DDI numbers and registered these as part of the same network.

User licenses are charged monthly on a rolling 30 day agreement and calls up to 2000 minutes per month per user to UK 01, 02, 03 and 07 numbers are included within the monthly charge.

It was important this was a flexible agreement for these temporary site offices. Calls are delivered via the LAN and the existing data connection.

Finally we installed an Cell-Fi GO system with external donor antenna on the side of the building and routed RF cables within the office and mounted internal antennas to deliver an enhanced signal strength within the offices from a local Cellular mast for Vodaphone and EE signalling.

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