Illinois
Institute of Technology (IIT)
Technical support of IIT ‘s new McCormick
Tribune Campus Center of about 100,000 square feet and State Street Village
Complex for residential housing of about 400 Graduate Students. The project
designs were by two for of the worlds leading architects: Demarks’ Rem
Koolhaus and Chicago’s own Helmut Jahn. The campus setting is a USA top American Institute
of Architects (AIA) rated site with significant need to maintain original design
integrity. IIT had been master planned and impacted by the addition of
twenty buildings in a thirty-year period, all done by Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe and Skidmore Owning and Merrill. Also impacting the site were
related “National Architectural Site” rated buildings with related
implications on technical design. Although the design teams were on balance
working well, the project challenges were multiple:
The major challenge was
“schedule rescue”: to bring the technology portions of two related
projects, the McCormack Campus Center and the State Street Village, though
completion of design development quickly with construction documents, and
back in line with the main construction schedules. Design development
was behind due to the technical confusion caused by project complexity.
Mutual thought processes or internal consensus were not at levels needed for
bid package development.
Out of date, aged,
non-planned technical infrastructures and legacy network systems had been
added on an as needed with no consistency. Fragmented end user support
was ad hoc and manual by two different support organizations, with poor
coordination.
Campus wide networking
connectivity was needed to support educational aims, and campus applications
but was fragmented. In its then current state, the network was unreliable
with poor record keeping of existing assets. Stand alone,
non-networked systems were clearly over due for assessment and planning of
upgrades with budgets for the approval process and schedules for phased
implementations.
Many of the buildings
needed to have technology upgrades and fiber-optic connectivity with the
rest of the campus
To compress time frames, a
plan with parallel efforts was agreed to, and completed cooperatively. The
College Departments agreed to address issues and ITC would serve as the
technical resource to give the parties clarity and arrive at consensus based
decisions time effectively.
Our initial assessments
were cooperatively arrived at, shared between Departments, and consensus
agreements reached. Internal leadership from Facilities and
Telecommunications Departments was agreeing to and input roles from affected
Departments defined. What proved effective were short, focused,
question- answer sessions and “ over coffee” meetings between key
department persons in which technical clarity was reached and consensus was
found.
Campus wide formal
standards and their format were agreed upon for all current and new
projects. Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) formats in
construction and planning documents by ITC would be the going forward
standard site wide. According to IIT, the Campus Standards and CSI Formats
have been permanently reused for the last five years since project
completion, and have provided predictable repeatable designs, have saved
significant time and process since their inception.
Technology assessments were
done and delivered on multiple special systems. In support of the design
vision of both new projects and the positive academic image of the school in
attracting new students, priorities were established to design and
commission state of the art campus wide connectivity and wireless systems to
serve the new McCormack Student Center, State Street Village, the existing
campus buildings and the entire campus. The results were highly
favorable with the academic community, the students, and IIT faculty giving
the new wireless and campus wide networks rave reviews. When completed, IIT s’ were the fastest college academic networks in
the United States and said to be a recruiting aid by IIT’s Technical
Colleges.
While design development
was being completed with construction and related bid documents, parallel
efforts to inventory current campus wide special systems, and networks and
assets were completed. Fiber optic additions to the campus to support
both the new projects and existing campus were designed.
Recommendations were made and implemented to consolidate help desk and break
fix functions, with clearly assigned roles and tasks, and formal
coordination that solved end user support complaints. Master Planning
documents and Campus Specifications Standards for technology were developed
with high-level budgets and phasing for future deployments.
New state of the art
optical networks, network electronics, and wireless systems were installed
using strategies that minimized and concealed the additions without
noticeable effect to the architectures of most of the sites. For the Bid
phase, contractors were pre-screened as to similar site experience and
attention to detail, prior to invitation to bid to prevent potential quality
issues. The results were of minimal impact on the original
architectural interior designs.
Telecommunications and
Electrical infrastructure and low voltage underground world were integrated
under one bid package to save about 8% on the budget and cut implementation
time by about 10%. The work was awarded and completed on schedule and
on budget for both projects using MBE contracting.