Writing Tech Cabling Needs for Architects and Installers

When building or updating a new school, it can appear to be a daunting task to write out a data cable plan design especially for infrastructure to give to the architect. However, one of my professors a long time ago told me something very important. Make it into smaller problems. 

Our process starts thinking what type of rooms are in a school? Classrooms, Offices, Libraries, Science Labs, Computer labs, Cafeterias, Gyms, Hallways, and maybe a few others. 

Lets break one of those down. Whats in a classroom? A teachers computer station, a projector of some sort, maybe a few student stations, and perhaps kids with student devices (ipads, nooks, kindles, etc). What connectivity is needed at a teacher computer station? A data drop, a phone drop (likely a data), an interface to the projector, power outlet, and maybe something else? So that makes 2 data drops, an AV plug, and power for a teacher computer location. Maybe we want to define the AV plug a bit more. Most projectors have 2 SVGAs, HDMI, mini audio, and svideo, RCA crap. Well, we get lots of tech support calls on svideo and RCA so we don't install them. No reason to create a headache in the future for both groups. If you give people a spot to plug in a cable, they will. simple but important lesson. The cables will need to be run to the projector so that fact will need to be notated (btw, there are some cool solution that will fit in a 3/4" to 1" conduit for this). 

Now onto the projector. Lets call this the ceiling since more things will be up here. You have the projector which will need power and the matching AV from the teacher location. If there are lots of wireless devices, maybe a network drop. Most rooms have speakers too. some are getting cameras. We do all these over IP in our house. lets count. 1 data for the projector for management, 1 for wireless, 1 for speaker, and for camera/future. 4 data in the ceiling plus an AV box and don't forget power for the porjector. Using a custom ceiling tile here works well. Other things the designers will want to know is the throw of the projector so learn to dig up cut-sheets. 

Next student drops. Data and power, just how many. We do 2 or 4 depending on the age. we are dropping to two since all devices now are wireless. no reason to put data on the wall not to be used.

It looks like we've just defined a classroom? A teacher station location, an AV/ceiling location, and student data locations. Other notes to add for the designers, projectors do not like hot air. do not place a vent in front of the projector. It works great...until the first cold day. You'll find you can reuse a lot of your definitions as you go. Our spec to hand to architects and designers is about 8-10 pages.We add stuff for IDFs, MDFs, etc. We even cover service loops, support structure and other items. It ends up taking about 1-2 days to write it out with another to clean it up.

And thanks again to my professor who taught me solve a bunch of small problems.