Lillie Square, CAPCO & KFI Joint Venture
A resilient network, designed to scale and deliver fault tolerant, highly available services to a diverse range of business and consumer users.
An ambitious plan to create an entirely new London neighbourhood, with modern living standards to outshine any other development of its kind. Lillie Square forms part of the ‘Earls Court Masterplan’, designed to transform Earls Court into four new urban villages, including approximately 7,500 new homes and range of work spaces, which blend cutting edge architecture with the technology of tomorrow.
One of the most high-profile residential developments in London, Lillie Square offers everything modern life requires. From the finest architectural detail to the services that residents of its 808 high end homes use. The joint venture partnership, comprising of Capco & KFI, understood that to deliver the quality of living and service their customers expect, it was essential to use trusted and proven suppliers, such as Panoptics.
With a close, symbiotic relationship that pre-dates the formation of the business, Panoptics have been delivering cutting edge network services to Capco since 2012. As such, Panoptics were invited to validate Lillie Square’s ‘Mechanical & Electrical’ and ‘Network Architecture’ plans, which subsequently led to a tender for the developments complex network requirements.
A network for the future
With a clear requirement for a technology partner to not only deliver a robust network infrastructure but also understand the overarching requirements of the entire Lillie Square development and design with this in mind. It was essential Capco could trust their chosen provider.
The network had to capably underpin the diverse range of IP services required by the development and its residents, including access control, telephony, WIFI, CCTV and building management systems to name a few – which dictated the need for complete resilience, fault tolerance and high availability at all times. Furthermore, subsequent phases of the development required architectural expertise to design a network that would provide sufficient capacity and performance for the entire estate, now and in the future. Of paramount importance to ensuring advantageous ROI was the need for a network that could scale throughout the construction project. From the first phase all the way to the final build and occupation.
The Challenge
A number of challenges were clear from the outset of the engagement. All of which Panoptics had the expertise and experience to overcome. A key pre-requisite was to deliver a network solution at the right price point that did not compromise performance and was only achievable with Panoptics experience in creating bespoke network designs for every engagement.
Incorporation of new emerging technologies, ever shifting development designs and high end specifications such as ultra low latency requirements for storage and CCTV could have also proved a challenge if it weren’t for the expertise Panoptics deliver. Additionally, these challenges were mitigated as Panoptics took full responsibility and ownership of the entire network, from design to deployment (almost unheard of in a development this size), for all of the services that run across it.
Furthermore, the level of detail bestowed on the project by Panoptics extended to guidance and design advice for the communications room where the network infrastructure would be housed. Everything from air conditioning, power and UPS were specified to ensure the solution delivered was 100% optimised for performance and resilience.
The Solution
Panoptics delivered a network designed to surpass any residential development requirement now and in the future, sufficiently capacious and scalable with the inclusion of key Cisco technologies. Designed to evolve with the build schedule, the network deployed considered future development requirements including the addition of another communications room in later phases.
The inclusion of current Cisco core network infrastructure allowed the efficient provisioning of multi-homed, high bandwidth links. Each of which benefits from low latency transit with sufficient headroom to facilitate further integrations without compromising performance.
The Panoptics design also factors the smallest possible physical footprint to bring the benefits of environmental efficiency, low TCO and ease of management.
By engaging and consulting with each of the numerous sub-contractors from the outset (car charging vendors, BMS, Fire, CCTV etc), all with varying requirements and differing complexities, the network was designed around actual needs resulting in a smooth installation for all third parties requiring network services.
The Results
A seamless integration, facilitated by Panoptics approach of pre-staging and testing the agreed design prior to deployment meant that the onsite installation was largely just a physical task. The network had been fully tested, audited and quality assured prior to engineers arriving at site. The result of this approach meant that Panoptics were able to commission and bring services into operation within the smallest of timescales and delivered the entire project ahead of schedule.
Once the network was live, Panoptics ensured complete customer satisfaction by acting as a single point of contact for onsite contractors’ commissioning engineers. With a dedicated Network Engineer and Project Manager, implementation times were greatly reduced and change control processes simplified. Sub-contractors benefitted from easy access to network expertise, meaning that fix times and snagging issues were addressed as efficiently as possible.
Panoptics also implemented some additional cost and time saving features into the deployment, including short patch cables for efficient management of the network connections and flood patching the cabinets so in reality there is little need to revisit the cabinets in the future as all points are connected. The entire design was installed on time and on budget.
The Benefits
Panoptics transparent, holistic approach to contract fulfilment allows Capco to manage and service their end users in a most fiscally efficient manner without compromising quality of service delivery.
Panoptics consultative approach combined with the bespoke implementation and delivery of service management, markedly reduced break-fix / remediation times. The Lillie Square network is now fully monitored, not only for failures but also to facilitate resource and capacity management, allowing Capco complete peace of mind whilst their end users enjoy a highly available, robust network performance by default.