July 13, 2014

This is an Executive Summary Plan for our new building for which construction begins in exactly six weeks. My name is Peggy Decker and I will be the Project manager for the design and installation of our new cable network for that building. I am excited to be a part of the project and look forward to working with each and every one of you during this exciting time of growth for our company. When considering the capacity if this project I ask you to consider all ideas or changes you see as plausible and should be brought to my attention at any time. All input will be appreciated and welcomed.
When I was assigned with this project I was given several different diagrams of how our new building will be occupied and a few different floor plans. With these my team and I will need to come up with a wiring diagram that will not fit our building’s needs but also allow for future growth of our building. With this project we plan for it to be a bit more expensive than common plans but it will allow for less problematic growth of our building and network in the future.
When tacking a project like this we have several different issues that must be addressed. Our first priority in this process is to understand all of the proper building standards and codes. There are several different organizations that we will have to contact and work with to include the Insulated Cable Engineers Association and the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA). These organizations, along with a few others will direct us in proper installation of all of our cables for the network and other safety precautions. For example the Electronic Industries Alliance will help us set guidelines for installing all of our telecommunication needs and will work with a wide variety of electronic manufacturers to ensure our products are running not only productively but safely.
The Insulated Cable Engineers Association (ICEA) will aid us in several different facets of installation of our cable for the network. The technical expertise they have for developing documents that reflect our current cable design, material content and other performance criteria will be essential for us to meet codes designed by organizations like the American national Standards Institute, Telecommunications Industry Association and the previously stated Electronic Industries Alliance. When working with ICEA we will have access to documents developed by Telecommunication Wire and Cable Standards Technical Advisory Committee that consists of ICEA members, along with other manufacturers, material suppliers and local standards and code groups. Meeting the standards of these organizations is a must if we are to open this building on schedule.
As in any large undertaking like this one there will be a lot of material we will need to acquire. From the simplest equipment such as Patch Cable (DSL line that runs from your computer to the wall jack) to the most complex as Cisco Catalyst Switch’s to the most expensive which will be all of the servers we need to purchase, clarity of the budget will be essential. There will be thousands of feet of cable that have to be bought. There has been an inquiry on whether we should use fiber-optic cable or go with al copper cable; this subject will be addressed later in this letter. As for other material we will need, include computers with Windows 7 operating systems, network routers, and printers. These are just the tip of the ice berg but to help you understand for just these items, each will need other things just for themselves to work properly to include keyboards and mouse for all the computers, ink for all the printers and so on.
To address the cable inquires and ideas. I don’t not like the idea of installing copper cables in our new building it’s outdated. A copper cable is a 1960’s technology and in my opinion should not be installed in a building being built in 2014. The only positive thing about copper cable is that it is half as expensive as fiber optic cables. The negative statements include fire hazard, frequent and expensive maintenance compared to fiber optic cable, radio wave interference to name just a few. There is no upside to installing this mostly due to the age of this line and most of our ISP and telecommunication business partners already use fiber-optic cables for getting us the access to internet and phone lines needed. But if we do decide to use copper lines for our network we will need tools such as Copper cable cutters, Network testers, powered cable cutters to name a few.
Moving on to Fiber-optic cable there are several better aspects that we need to address to show the upside it has compared to copper cable. The most important aspect I believe is with the lack of electricity that fiber optic cables don’t have (making it a non fire hazardous bonus) it is replaced with a much higher bandwidth which means that our network will be drastically faster and making our employees much more productive and happier all around! Honestly it does get very frustrating with a clogged network; constantly waiting on internet pages to load and printers to print is annoying for our people and will cost us money. With fiber-optic cable bandwidth we will have a better overall network allowing for more production. The tools necessary for fiber-optic cable installation include Cat5 testers, crimping tool kits and fiber Optic cable Slitters just to name a few.
When creating a design for installing fiber-optic cable not only do we have to think about where the cable itself will be running but where all of the necessary cable trays and runs will be installed. With the floor plans that we have we are design a plan that will put several network access jacks in each room but with the understanding that with the expense of fiber optic cable we need to ensure that we are using it wisely. We are developing a plan to run the cable directly for the server rooms to each office and room and then interconnecting all of the server rooms. We have a plan of where to install all of the horizontal cable runs and trays along with all of the vertical cable runs outside of the server rooms.
With these server rooms we have to look specifically at the basement floor of our building specifically. Our basement will be made up of rooms that will support our IT department and most of our network. First and foremost we have to think of safety! This floor will have a lot of electricity pulsating through it so we have need for several cooling fans and fire prevention tools that will keep not only our people safe but our new building. The air temperature in the basement will be warmed by all of the servers and other electronic devices there so I recommend installing different cooling units for just that floor alone. With all of the expensive electronic equipment there we will also need a fire fighting capability that is unique to that floor. Please understand that this floor has only two offices on it that belong to the CIO and IT chief with 7 other rooms that belong to servers, LAN and WAN maintenance and the telecommunications room. So hopefully you will understand the different needs for this particular floor.
The First floor in itself will be made of offices with two small rooms belonging to the IT department. With this floor human needs out way the needs for our servers, so I recommend that we install at least two small ventilation fans in each room to allow for fresh cool air to be blown into the room with one exhaust fan in the ceiling (since warm air rises). This will allow for our smaller servers and LAN support switches to stay cool with fresh cold air that will be insulated to just those two rooms and not the adjoining offices around these rooms. We have also laid out a possible office furniture plan that will optimize our office space and put our employee’s desk in an appropriate place adjacent to network access jacks.
As stated in this memo, we have addressed a lot of safety issues when it comes to successfully installing a network and all of its attachments. We have addressed the fire prevention ideas especially when it comes to installing electricity free fiber-optic cables compared to the lighting rod that is copper cable. Also I wrote about the amount of electricity that will be running through the basement and our server and LAN rooms and the need to cool these rooms. I have not yet addressed the security need for our IT department. There will need to be limited access to our network rooms and server closets. Only IT personnel will be allowed access to them. No other employees will be allowed in under any circumstances not only for their own safety but for the safety of our building and our network.
The huge security problem we do have in the basement is the door to the outside. I recommend we put a lock that requires an ID and password to access that floor through that door. We will have an administrative person with access only to our offices at the desk in the open area but that is for security and administrative purposes only. For all of the doors each member will have a master key to get into each room in the basement with a copy going to our security personnel in case of an emergency. We are currently working on our new security policy for these rooms and it will be briefed upon moving into the new building.
I understand that there can be a cheaper plan put together with inferior equipment and less secure ideas of how to handle our safety and security. We believe that our safety, security and production is not an issue that you can put a price on that causes us to lose money as a company but only to receive more money and the potential for growth.
Yours truly,
Peggy Decker
Peggy Decker

Part II
Here is an update on what we have done so far, we have come to conclusion on what we are going to buy, safety per cautions for what needs to be installed and where everything will be installed throughout the building. I have made a Excel product listing of what we will buy, how much it is going to cost and I thought in this letter I would break down a little why we are buying what we are buying. As well as proper safety procedures for all of the installation and why we are installing everything where we are.
If you look at the top of the spread sheet you will see two different sizes of patch cables being bought, 200 at 7ft and 10 at 14ft. The reason for this is the smaller 7foot ones will be installed on the entire PC’s connecting the computer to the wall jack. The 14 foot ones will go to the IT guys in the LAN room to use on their server racks. We purchased 1,000 feet of cat 6 cable for the building and this wire will connect servers, systems and switches. We will also purchase 1,000 feet of fiber-optic cable and this will be used to connect everything, room to room, server room to switch closet. Last we will by 250 SC connectors to connect all of this wire together.
We purchased 250 cable trays for protection of our wires. We are going to run roughly around 1,000 feet of fiber cable and cat6 line so this tray will bolt above the drop ceiling and hold this wiring in place to protect it. We will buy 5 CISCO Catalyst Switches, one for every floor in the building and what these will do is interconnect every work station with the internet and all of the other systems in the building.
When deciding on printers we had to decide how many people we wanted to assign to one printer. It was just too expensive to buy one printer for every one so we sat down and came up with the number 20 per printer. With 200 people in the building and 20 to a printer we knew we needed at least 10 the added 2 for the IT personnel giving us a total of 12. The only worry we have with buying this many printers is the bog on the network that it might cause but we feel that 12 total should keep everything flowing smoothly as long as problems with the printers are reported as soon as they are found.
We had a tough call when it came to purchasing systems for everyone; we had to choose between laptops and desktops. Then we looked at the price of desktops after buying monitors, keyboards, mice and speakers so we found the best thing to a desk top we could find at a reasonable price. The HP all in one accomplishes all of that by giving us exactly what we need in one price. These little computers are powerful plus easily installed cutting a huge spending nightmare out of the budget.
We will buy 5 border routers to attach to our 5 switches, why I don’t know I guess that’s the IT’s request. We will have 20 server systems installed in our building. These will hold information about our company and protect our network.
Yours truly,
Peggy Decker
Peggy Decker