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:

•  1. 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.

• 2. Out of date, aged, non-planned technical infrastructures and legacy network systems had been added on an as needed with no consistency.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.

• 3. 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.

• 4. Many of the buildings needed to have technology upgrades and fiber-optic connectivity with the rest of the campus

•  1. 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.

• 2. 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.

• 3. 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.

• 4. 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.

• 5. New state of the art optical networks, network electronics, and wireless systems were installed using strategies that minimized and concealed the additions without noticeable affect 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.

• 6. 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.

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