The requirement:

In January St Anselms Primary School came to BETT show looking for ideas for the task of completely re-designing the schools ICT suite. They found Netcom’s stand. The enquiry was passed to our sales manager and a pre-sales consultation meeting was arranged and booked for that same week.
St Anselms needed to upgrade their ICT suite to accommodate an additional 16 workstations. The school needed to provide a suitable classroom for 30 pupils and a teacher. This meant the room would be increasing from 15 workstations to 31.
To accommodate these extra machines the room needed a re-designed floor plan which would make the room functional but safe for everyone visiting and using the room. This meant new furniture would be needed as the room currently had benching which was very old and didn’t make full usage of the rooms teaching space.
St Anselms was looking for a company who could take care of the entire project including product supply, installation and design.

The full requirements were:

  • 15 x Double ICT secure desks
  • 1 x teachers ICT secure desk
  • Rremoval of existing data and power services
  • Iinstall new 35 x Cat5e data outlets
  • Rewire all electrics and bring up to current regulation standards.
  • New 3 compartment trunking system to accommodate new data and power cabling
  • Re-location of existing IWB and projector including all local connections
  • 31 x Dell Optiplex PC’s

The room design and desking:

Netcom visited the school to carry out a consultation meeting and to run through the schools project requirements. Netcom then began designing the ICT suite ensuring we did our utmost to meet all the schools requirements. The first thing was to design a seating plan to accommodate the students and teacher.
Netcom designed a floor plan using CAD software. The design included our secure ICT desks with full security features. Each workstation would have a made to measure PC enclosure situated under the desktop and a secure monitor arm mounted to the worktop.
The PC enclosures are designed to house the tower or desktop under the desk. Each enclosure has its own key lock ensuring the unit is completely secure. The monitor arms are designed to be installed to the top of the worktop. They contain a lockable device which ensures the monitor is secure at all times. The arms have tilt and swivel movements for optimal student viewing.
Netcom used double desks designed to seat two students per desk. The desks measured 1600mm wide x 600mm deep x 730mm high. We also included a teachers desk which had all the security features plus a set of draws mounted on the under side of the desk top.
The desks also included our under desk cable containment design. This means that you can have a power and data outlet at each student workstation. This was very important to the school as they wanted to keep the cable routes from the PC’s to the data and power provisions short so students would not tamper with any cables. This feature also adds to the health and safety aspect along with the PC enclosures which takes the PC off the floor.

Option 1

op 1

Option 2

op 2

Structured cabling and outlet locations:

Once we had an agreed preferred floor plan we created a cabling plan for the Cat5e user outlets. Netcom would install 36 new data outlets situated around the room. We installed an outlet at each work station which was situated in our under desk cable containment. The 5 remaining outlets where placed along our bespoke work bench as they are to be used for printers, scanners and laptops.

The cables were routed around the classroom through 3 compartment trunking system. This trunking prevents any tampering and also adds to the aesthetics of the room.

The new Cat5e outlets were terminated at the cabinet within our patch panels. Netcom then patched all the new outlets into the relevant data switches which we provided and installed.

The data outlets were then performance tested with our Fluke testing equipment. Each workstation would now have its own data outlet ensuring optimum network speed and connection.

PC Workstations:

Netcom would be providing and installing 31 new PC’s for the ICT suite. During our consultation meeting we discussed the specification the school required. The school opted for Dell optiplex machines with 19” monitors. These machines included Intel Pentium Dual core processors, 160GD hard drives and 2GB of memory.

The machines would be installed into the security features at each workspace. The monitors were mounted to the secure monitor arms and the towers were situated in the PC enclosures mounted under the desktop.

All the cables were connect to the data and power outlets within the under desk cable containment. Netcom then collected all the serial numbers and passed them to the school for asset tagging.

Projector and Screen:

St Anselms required a re-location of existing projector and screen in their ICT suite. The placement of the projector was very important and we designed the floor plan around where it would be situated.

Netcom understand that the students need easy access to the screen. With this in mind the position of the projector was decided before we agreed the room’s new floor plan.

The screen was mounted directly under the boom arm. The projector and screen is situated just behind the teacher’s desk as it is used frequently in lessons.

Remote Cat5e Outlets:

St Anselms wants to offer ICT provisions to the pupils in every classroom. To offer this they need to have data provisions in every room.

The requirement was to install 35 new Cat5e data outlets into the classroom in the school. Netcom would then connect these data outlets to remote wall cabinets. The wall cabinets are linked back to the main comms cabinet in the ICT suite.

Netcom installed the new outlets by using internal room trunking and presented the outlets within double gang back boxes.

All the new data outlets and cabinet links were performance tested with our Fluke testing equipment.