Structured Cabling

A new strategy that is evolving in commercial new construction and major remodeling projects is that of Structured Cabling. Although simple in concept, it is a breakthrough approach that has multiple benefits and no drawbacks.

Structured Cabling involves the installation of all low voltage and fiber optic cabling at the same time, using just one company. While the termination and final routing of cables for different systems may require the special talents of a variety of contractors, the physical pulling and routing of cables becomes more efficient and cost effective. The cable systems that fall under the Structured Cabling umbrella include:

FocusMicro is one of the industry leaders that is pioneering this strategy and is also one of its greatest proponents. The reason for this is that FocusMicro has been able to demonstrate the advantages of Structured Cabling to customers across the nation. Some of these advantages are:

• Installations are much more cost effective. It is far more inexpensive to have one company installing 10 cables than it is to have 10 companies installing 1 cable each. The costs are the same for a cable installation team whether they are installing one cable or 10 cables.
• The quality of the Structured Cable installation is much higher than that of multiple cable installations performed by multiple companies. Workmanship standards are consistent throughout, major backbones would consist of one cable bundle rather than multiple series of cable bundles and routings are uniform.
• One of the most critical aspects of cabling systems is that of labeling. In a Structured Cabling environment, labeling terminology is consistent and clearer. The quality and repeatability of the labels is higher, allowing personnel new to the facility to become more quickly oriented.
• The cables installed under a Structured Cabling team will have consistent redundancies built in for all systems. Redundancies are necessary to reduce the cost of business expansion in the future or to economically recover from damage or failure to a line.
• Structured Cabling can be accomplished in far less time than traditional cable installation strategies, making it ideal for projects with tight schedules and even tighter budgets.
• There are fewer coordination issues when just one company is responsible for all low voltage cabling, allowing project managers to focus on the more critical aspects of bringing their facility on line

Structured Cabling makes the permitting and inspection processes simpler, more efficient and less expensive. One company can pull just one umbrella permit and schedule just one inspection for all low voltage systems.

FocusMicro brings their renowned reputation for world class quality to Structured Cabling, delivering cable installations that customers have called "a work of art". Is low voltage cabling quality really that important? Yes - most low voltage signal degradations and cable failures are caused by poor quality cable installation practices. And as all managers know, the cost to troubleshoot and repair a cable problem is between 10 and 100 times the cost of having the installation done right the first time.

"You could blindfold me and drop me in any facility in the country. I'll be able to tell you in minutes if one of my teams did the cable installation" assures FocusMicro's Chief Operating Officer Ken Rhule. "We've rescued too many customers from someone else's poor cable installations. The problems that bad cabling causes are often hard to troubleshoot and difficult to pinpoint. It's far better in the long run for customers to have FocusMicro deliver a Structured Cabling solution to their facility." Why don't more companies specify Structured Cabling for their projects? Most of the time it is just the result of an oversight. If you'd like to learn more about Structured Cabling and the benefits that it can have for your next project, contact a FocusMicro sales representative today.