Making their case: Case studies exemplify innovation in action

Three case-study stories were honored in our 2020 Cabling Innovators Awards program. When soliciting entries, we asked organizations to “Tell the whole story about a project that displayed the innovative characteristics we honor in this program. Customer-focused and collaborative approaches to projects and cabling-system deployments make a project shine throughout the value chain—from manufacturer to distributor to design and installation pro to end-user organization. This category recognizes innovative and showpiece projects that are exemplary.”

Here are nutshell versions of the three honorees.

Museum of the Bible: Located blocks from the U.S. Capitol building in the heart of Washington D.C., the new 430,000-square-foot Museum of the Bible was five years in the making from initial design work to its grand opening in November 2017. The building was originally constructed in 1922 as a refrigerated warehouse. The museum’s leadership and its partners—including Superior Essex and Legrand—have repurposed the 8-story brick building and transformed it into a technological spectacle that encompasses high-tech displays, theme-park-style interactive exhibits, expansive theaters, thousands of artifacts and attractive event spaces. These all work together to attract visitors from different countries and cultures to experience the bible’s impact on the modern world. The museum partnered with integrator S2N Technology Group LLC to review technology requirements and then design each exhibit’s low-voltage application. Manufacturing rep Network Products Inc. specified and supplied the cable necessary to connect these complex, networked AV systems. Superior Essex delivered the fiber and copper cabling solutions, and Legrand supplied cable management and connectivity in the telecom and AV equipment rooms. Throughout the fast-tracked construction schedule of just under 2 years, S2N worked with Superior Essex and Legrand to design and equip more than 20 telecom and AV rooms, which housed all the active equipment and termination components for every application connected by the structured cabling, as well as to each exhibit. By completion, the low-voltage installer Net100 Ltd. had spent more than 26,000 hours installing more than 735,000 feet of Superior Essex fiber and copper cables to provide data, voice, power and AV to more than 2200 devices throughout the museum.

Seattle’s Northgate Extension light-rail project: The $54-billion improvement and expansion project for Seattle’s light-rail infrastructure, called the Northgate Extension, was primarily a tunnel section that will accommodate an estimated daily ridership of 41,000 to 49,000 by 2022. For the project, public safety and seamless communication with the rest of the systems were priorities. The project needed an innovative product that would work well in the confined spaces and tunnels, and would seamlessly connect with outside plant, using standard couplers, tools, and installation techniques. The Northgate Extension project used more than 22,500 feet of Dura-Line’s 1-inch Low Smoke Zero Halogen conduit, which was reformulated and launched in 2018. The product offering’s low coefficient of friction provides less stress on the fiber cable, allowing for greater air-jetting installation distances. The installation crews, which worked between the hours of 1:30 and 3:30am for several days in order to complete the conduit installation, pulled the conduit in vault to vault. The 1-inch LSZH conduit were inserted into a larger 4-inch duct, which was encased in concrete and ran the entire length of the Northgate Extension, over 22,500 feet. The crew was able to air-jet fiber cable for the entire length from the safety of their access points. Air-jetting allowed the fiber cable to be inserted at 200 feet per minute. Future upgrades and changes can be made just as easily, from the safe access points, and avoiding disrupting the light rail schedule.

Ongoing excellence at UC Davis Medical Center: Panduit and General Cable have been the network-infrastructure providers at the UC Davis Medical Center for 14 years. The center serves a 65,000-square-mile area that includes 33 counties and 6 million residents across Northern and Central California. Today, General Cable’s GenSpeed 10 and Panduit connectivity is the standard for all network cabling projects. Over the past 14 years, PanGen has supported hundreds of projects, including more than 50 large projects ranging from new buildings to renovations, including a wireless access point upgrade project that included the installation of 680 APs. Another nine large projects are currently under construction or planned. The medical center is supported by four data centers (one on-premises and three colocation facilities), and more than 250 telecommunications rooms. The campus has more than 70,000 cable drops, which means more than 140,000 Panduit connectors, and more than 12 million feet (more than 2,300 miles) of cable from General Cable.