Transdev: fibre, cabinets and groundwork on a working bus depot
The situation. A depot full of buses, spread over a large outdoor site,
that keeps running twenty-four hours a day. Everything we did had to happen around an operation
that could not stop.
Why a site like this needs fibre and outdoor cabinets
Copper runs out at 100 metres including patch cords. On a site measured in hundreds of
metres, that decides the design on its own: fibre between the buildings and the outdoor
cabinets, copper only for the last stretch from each cabinet to the equipment around it.
There is a second reason, and on an outdoor site it matters more than the distance. Two
buildings with separate earthing systems can sit at a different potential, and a copper link
between them will carry that difference straight into the equipment at both ends. Fibre does
not conduct, so that problem disappears.
What the work involved
- Groundwork: trenches and ducting for the fibre routes across the site.
- Fibre and network cabling, terminated and measured.
- Technical cabinets inside and outside, built and labelled. An outdoor
cabinet is a different job from an indoor one: it has to deal with temperature, damp and
someone eventually needing to open it in the rain. - Sensors, intercom, alarm and cameras on that same infrastructure,
including thermal cameras that report a rising temperature immediately.
Over forty cameras run on this network. For the network design that is the number that
matters: cameras run continuously, they draw power over the same cable that carries their data,
and they do not tolerate a link that is marginal. Sizing the power budget and the uplinks for
that load is most of the engineering.
We do more for them than one project
The depot was not a single job. We also supply people when they simply need hands —
someone to mount a screen, to fit out a workspace, to move equipment. That is a normal part of
what we do for organisations that have their own IT department but need capacity on the floor
in this country.
Everything in our own hands, because that is where it usually goes wrong
The groundwork, the cabling, the cabinets and the equipment on top of them were all done by
our own people. On a site like this the failures happen between suppliers: the trench is dug
before the duct arrives, or the cabinet is placed before anyone checks how the cable reaches
it. With one party responsible for the whole chain, those gaps do not exist.
Could this be your project?
If you are setting something up in the Netherlands from another country, the first step
costs you nothing: we come and look, and tell you what we would do and what it depends on.
Call 036 52 98 447 or send us a message in English.
