The success of a building or office project depends entirely on the success of the SCS project

With the beginning of the design stage, the life cycle of the SCS facility starts.

Who determines the success of the SCS design stage? This question will be answered a little later.

The quality of design documentation largely determines what the constructed SCS will be like, how it will be built, how it will be operated and what benefits it will bring to the Customer.

Explanatory note, compliance with regulatory documents, binding to architecture, topology, specification, interaction with related engineering systems, acceptance test methodology, requirements for the installer, manufacturer’s warranty, work plan, labor protection, environmental protection – this and much more the other is described in the project documentation.

And the subsequent most selfless efforts of the Customer’s tender committee and the most experienced and competent installation organization for SCS chosen by it will not fix anything. According to the project documentation for “Zaporozhets”, you cannot assemble a “Tesla” electric car.

What is SCS, what it consists of and why it is needed, at the start of a building project, almost none of the project participants often knows.

As a rule, the Customer has a vague idea about SCS. And even the presence of internal corporate standards for SCS in large corporations does not clarify this issue. The fact is that these documents often become outdated even before they are approved.

General contracting design organizations, as a rule, have no idea about SCS at all. They know how to draw up project documentation in accordance with local legislation, how to pass a state examination, they understand building structures, water, heat, plumbing, electricity, lighting. They know that there should be a staircase, how wide the corridor should be, they will think about toilets, but they will not be able to allocate a separate room for a telecoms crossroad in the clinic. They save precious square meters and are not going to give them away for SCS office space.

They do not yet know that SCS exists in Ukraine on a legal basis – since the beginning of 2019, an international SCS standard has been operating in the country: ISO / IEC 11801 (2018) parts 1-6.

General contracting design organizations often do not know that LAN and SCS are different engineering systems and very often include them in one section of design documentation.

Ask them: “What category should the SCS copper cable be at their new facility in accordance with the current Ukrainian legislation?” They won’t say, they don’t know, they didn’t think, they are not interested in it. The availability of design documentation from a previously built facility of a similar purpose will not help them either. Indeed, by the current time the solutions of that project documentation are already outdated.

The experience of the Customer’s IT department also does not always help, because they have experience in operating facilities with the infrastructure of the past. A person who has been mastering a carriage for many years will not come up with a car – he only knows well how to improve his carriage.

Authorized SCS installers must be involved in the design of SCS, and their employees must have personal certificates for the design of SCS from SCS manufacturers. And it is also very important that they have valid TIA, ANSI, ISO, IEC, BICSI standards for SCS. Most of the necessary international standards for SCS in Ukraine have not yet been put into effect, however, the development of SCS must be carried out according to them.

If your SCS designers do not have personal copies of the required SCS standards, then they are not designers, but simply called them.

An important topic is the relationship between the engineering systems of the building and the SCS. Let’s imagine that there is a norm – all low-current engineering systems of the building must work through the SCS. That is, individual engineering systems do not design their own cable routes for themselves, they do not provide for their own data transmission cables. They place their subscriber points on the premises of the building and connect to the nearest SCS consolidation points, and via SCS they already get to their central equipment in the cross-section or server room.

This approach gives a lot of advantages to the investor, general design contractor, general installation contractor, and facility owner:

• Design is simplified. The struggle of engineering systems for space disappears, the labor intensity of the development of engineering systems is reduced (no need to design routes and cables), the volume of approvals between projects of individual engineering systems decreases;
• Installation is simplified, installation time is reduced. The number of contractors “running” around the facility is decreasing: only one organization (the first) is laying routes, only one organization (the second) is laying information cables. The time for the presence of contractors for individual engineering systems at the facility is reduced. All they have to do is install their “subscriber” points and central equipment – and they are ready for commissioning
• The process of installation of engineering systems is simplified. The usual anthill of assembly teams scurrying back and forth from contractors for various low-current engineering systems disappears, natural production conflicts disappear, the need for many approvals and permits disappears;
• The cost of ownership of the object is reduced. One organization maintains the building’s cable system, to which dozens of engineering systems are connected

It is too late to discuss this topic at the installation stage, the decision must be made even before the design stage begins.

And the SCS designer himself cannot solve this issue, it is beyond his capabilities – this issue can be solved by the investor, owner or general contractor. (Then maybe the life cycle of the SCS object begins not with design, but earlier?)

Who determines the success of the design phase? From the Сustomer. Its weight and influence is sufficient for success in the creation of SCS. He can strengthen the general designer with a qualified SCS performer. He can set the role of SCS for the project of the object. The success of the SCS project success opens the way to the success of the facility project as a whole. And the Customer is most interested in this.