C A S E S T U D Y : M O D N O R T H W O O D

GovernmentBrand-Rex supplies military grade infrastructure at �agship UK headquarters – MOD Northwood Command

Centre. Eastbury Park, Northwood, is home to the UK’s national operational Defence Headquarters, employing

2,100 military and civilian personnel. The estate contains the permanent Joint Headquarters of the Chief of

Joint Operations, the Commander Naval Forces North – one of NATO’s three major Commanders – and the

Headquarters of the Commander in Chief Fleet.

established in 1939 as the home of the headquarters of coastal

command, royal air Force, northwood has always been a key

element in the strategic defence capability of the uK and its allies.

In July 1994, as part of the defence cost study review, it was

decided to form a Permanent Joint head Quarters (PJhQ)

at northwood, to replace the previous approach whereby

headquarters staffs were drawn together ad-hoc in response

to a developing crisis.

northwood, like many organisations, had grown up gradually

across the years, and this was reflected in its infrastructure.

“There was no common standard,” says Bob Blanks, cIs Projects

London head at the northwood hQ. “We had no accurate records

of what went where, plus most of the cable ducts had very little space

left in them.” northwood had run out of infrastructure capacity and

only had enough to meet its day to day requirements. any requests

for additional services, whether temporary or permanent, needed

the installation of new cabling.

In 1996, because of health and safety issues identified within the

northwood command centre it was proposed that PJhQ staffs

should have a new purpose built building. approval for a new

building was initially granted in 2001 however, due to other site

requirements and deficiencies, it was decided to amalgamate all

the requirements into a new site-wide statement of requirements

and seek bidders to undertake the work. the revised requirements

included a new maritime operations centre, enhancements to

counter terrorist measures, new and refurbished single living

accommodation together with a new sports hall, car park and

community areas. the whole site was to be underpinned by a

comprehensive, site-wide, infrastructure that met the demanding

standards and needs of the various military divisions.

Following a tendering, selection and negotiation process the

contract was awarded to carillion plc in october 2006, with

carillion construction being responsible for the new build and

refurbishment work and carillion service responsible for the

service delivery element.

c a s e s t u d y : m o d n o r t h w o o d

“the installations had to be unique and comply with the mod standards on design. For example,

the top secret link has to be sealed in its trunking, raising lots of potential issues for the designers

due to the high specification and need for complete separation.”

c a s e s t u d y : m o d n o r t h w o o d

“The PFI contract provides private sector lease or licence ownership of the

site for a period of 25 years, managing initially all the new building and

refurbishment works over an initial five year period and providing support

services to meet operational output for the full 25 years,” says Blanks.

the construction work, phased over a five year period, comprises

a mixture of refurbishment and new build of residential and

non-residential buildings to enhance both the condition and

functionality of the site. the services provided include grounds

and building maintenance, catering, cleaning, laundry, waste

management, provision of secretarial support, pest control,

security, travel management and cIs support.

as part of the comprehensive specification a new 1.5 kilometre

duct ring was constructed to provide resilient primary and

secondary circuits between the three main buildings as well as

radial links to each of the 20 buildings, both new and old.

“The MOD has unique requirements and the infrastructure needed to

be designed to stringent standards, with all cables fully enclosed and

contained throughout their length,” says Blanks.

It was also important to design redundancy into the routing to meet

the strict business continuity planning needs. another part of the

requirement was to provide three networks, one for each of the mod

classifications – secret, top secret and restricted. these networks

have to be completely separate and shielded from each other.

“We produced a technical boundary specification within our

statement of requirement stating that we needed three classifications

of network, but without specifying how it needed to be achieved,”

says Blanks.

“The installations had to be unique and comply with the MOD

standards on design. For example, the top secret link has to be sealed

in its trunking, raising lots of potential issues for the designers due to

the high specification and need for complete separation.”

due to the specific nature of the information systems requirements

carillion employed the specialist services of Lorne stewart to

design and build a passive computer information systems (cIs)

infrastructure and structured wiring scheme, based around the

mod requirements and standards.

“Having been involved with Brand-Rex on the prestigious Whitehall

Project, I was therefore very keen to encourage the use of Brand-Rex

products in the infrastructure solution for the Northwood site,”

says Blanks.

Lorne stewart produced an invitation to tender in July 2007

covering the design, supply, installation, commissioning and

warranty provision of the cIs infrastructure. the tender was won

on both price and quality of proposal by an authorised installation

partner who recommended using Brand-rex products throughout.

across the northwood site, 20 buildings are now fed by the new

1.5 kilometre duct ring and radial cross site network. Providing

both primary and secondary circuits between the three main site

distributor buildings the network offers resilience and reliability

and is capable of delivering the 24/7 availability and security

demanded by the mod.

“having been involved with Brand-rex on the prestigious whitehall Project, I was therefore very

keen to encourage the use of Brand-rex products in the infrastructure solution for the northwood

site,” says Blanks.

Y6 2RS united kingdomtel: +44 (0) 1592 772124 web: www.brand-rex.com

C A S E S T U D Y : M O D N O R T H W O O D

Consisting of multiple single mode and multi-mode �bres along with

100 pair twisted copper cables, the cross site infrastructure provides

all the connectivity for voice, video and data communications.

More than 74 kilometres of �bre cable has already been installed

within the duct rung and terminated using a mixture of ST and LC

terminations. In addition, 20 kilometres of copper cable has been

installed to support voice communications across the site.

Over 100 42u cabinets contain MOD active and passive equipment

along with two multi-rack voice frames for the termination of the

copper voice systems. The main PJHQ building has an internal

backbone linking the �ve �oor distributors using a mixture of multi-

and single-mode �bre optic cable. Horizontal cabling from each of

the �oor distributors uses Cat6Plus cabling and multi-mode �bre

to reach the 100 consolidation points that in turn feed over 20,000

outlets. Over 9,000 duplex patch cords and 6,000 Cat6Plus patch

cords have been provided to serve more than 1,500 desk locations.

Each desk has been designed to have four copper and six �bre

cables of varying classi�cations. As the desks are arranged in clusters

capacity can be easily transferred around each desk cluster as

required. “We are not like a corporation with one pc on the desk,”

says Blanks.

“Some of our operators will have up to three devices on their desks –

one for each category of network, to ensure that the top secret or

restricted access applications remain within their own security arena.

The only concessions we make is in the use of a switch to allow

mouse, keyboard and monitors to be shared by the systems. Physical

separateness is an important part of our security measures and some

users do have highly populated desks.”

Overall, more than 8,000 kilometres of �bre cores with 48,000

terminations and 3,000 kilometres of Cat6Plus cable with 13,000

terminations have been used across the site.

As the �ve year build phase now approaches its �nal year with several

buildings demolished and new ones already built, commissioned

and operational, Northwood is already bene�tting from its enhanced

facilities and has welcomed its new working environment.

The site now has a new secure CIS duct ring linking all its buildings,

together with formal access control procedures in place. The entire

infrastructure is now recorded within a central database, which in

turn gives advance warning when available capacity falls below set

requirements. With diverse routing capability to all buildings adding

greater resilience and �exibility, disaster recovery and business

continuity processes are greatly improved. To enhance security

further, separate, dedicated ducts have also been provided with their

own access arrangements for the use of third party suppliers, such

as BT. Dedicated ducts have also been installed for general site extra

low voltage (ELV) systems including intruder detection, CCTV and

�re alarms.

With details of all the new infrastructure captured and recorded

within a central database, Northwood has a robust delivery

mechanism for voice, video and data delivery around the site.

“We now have su�cient spare infrastructure capacity for the installation

of new IT systems,” says Blanks. “Standardising on cabinet, patch panel

and connector types has also streamlined the installation and makes

moves, adds and changes simple.”

To complement the massive £880 million investment programme

that supports the frontline operations at Northwood, Brand-Rex

has delivered a complex and sophisticated infrastructure to

support all the activities of the UK Defence Headquarters.

“Brand-Rex has supplied us with quality products and an infrastructure,

which together meet our performance standards and are backed by

a comprehensive 25 year warranty,” says Blanks. “It has allowed us to

deliver a modern and fully serviced environment to support the vital

work of our Armed Forces.”

“Brand-Rex has supplied us with quality products and an infrastructure, which together meet

our performance standards and are backed by a comprehensive 25 year warranty,” says Blanks.

“It has allowed us to deliver a modern and fully serviced environment to support the vital work

of our Armed Forces.”

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