T Clarke was founded in 1889 and they have a reputation for high-quality work and are known for their use of new technologies. They are a UK-based engineering services company that specialises in the design, installation, and maintenance of digital, mechanical, and electrical systems for buildings, working in a variety of sectors, including Rail, Utilities and Technologies, Manufacturing, Residential and Hotels, and Healthcare.
Their requirement was to get connectivity across all five sub-terranean floors during renovation works at world renowned The Ritz hotel in central London so that the construction team could access their core systems, communicate during works and allow sub-contractors to access their own systems too.
Foreseen Challenges
It’s a very, very big, old building with extremely large concrete spaces underground and being an ever changing space it meant that the environment itself would be difficult to work in. With zero phone signal and being unable to install fibre, the space is effectively cut off from the outside world, so our connection would need to come by other means.
The Solution
Firstly, it’s a big site. Our surveys suggested a need for 25 long range wireless access points spread around the 5 floors. Additionally, as we were unable to establish any fibre routes into the location we proposed creatively using a multi-WAN 5G solution located on the roof of The Ritz many floors above, but with good signal reach.
Also, using a unique network cable colour would allow clear definition of where IT network cables were run throughout the temporary environments, meaning they could be avoided and moved easily during renovations to maintain the integrity of the network.
Solution Proposed
Installation Process
Across a couple of installation phases, our team worked under CDM to install everything in a very fast-moving and changing environment. It’s often difficult to work with very specific site access requirements but suitable preparation and planning allowed us to fit with the very exacting site schedule. After around 3 days, installation and testing was completed with a handover to the T Clarke team followed by our remote monitoring and support service.
Support Given
After installation, the hardware moved into our standard remote monitoring and support process. With alerts provided if anything fails or goes offline, coupled with firmware upgrades, moves and changes as well as phone support should there be any questions or concerns.
Outcome
T Clarke were delighted to be able to get mobile phones, tablets and laptops connected in all corners of the darkest spaces, on the lowest floors of The Ritz.
The construction site now has coverage on all 5 basement levels to allow the multi-phase, multi-contractor renovation works to enjoy full connectivity and access to the key IT they need. Temporary bandwidth is available to allow onsite staff, clients and sub-contractors to operate normally, moving design files, talking on Microsoft Teams, sending and receiving emails coupled with general browsing.
"“As far as challenges go, this one was right up there. A really tough environment to work in and we are just glad that all our pre-installation planning made getting it all up and working, a lot easier!”"
Lee Avery
Fli-Fi Engineer
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