Case Study

Groton School Puts a Structured Cabling Backup System in Place

The Work

Groton School, a long-time customer of KTS, contacted them as the school was beginning to plan its 2022 budget. Groton School was interested in installing a redundant loop of fiber optic cabling around the campus to ensure that their network would be unlikely to fail completely. This strategy was part of their long-range planning and was the result of an incident that happened a few years ago.

While work was being done on the campus in 2018, a backhoe severed the fiber optic cabling – the communications backbone of the campus. KTS was immediately called and they got the campus back up and running quickly.

The Groton School’s head of Network and Infrastructure collaborated with KTS and reached the conclusion that the solution Groton School wanted was a redundant fiber optic cable loop around the campus, to ensure a backup was in place to maintain a functioning fiber optic backbone.

With KTS at the planning table, Groton School had all the information and inputs needed to include the plan and budget into the 2022 budget process. With the budget approved, KTS worked with Groton school to then schedule the work for the summer of 2022, when the campus was quiet.

Challenges

The challenge faced by KTS at Groton School was finding the routes to allow the cabling to be snaked throughout the campus. Many of the manholes were overgrown, requiring some effort to determine their locations, and one location had a flower bed planted over it.

Benefits/Impacts

Groton School has completed an important element of the school’s and the Network and Infrastructures department’s long-term plan. With the expertise and advice of KTS, the redundant fiber optic cable loop project was scoped, then budgeted and planned to avoid surprises and cost overruns. The redundant fiber optic cable loop provides a backup system, giving peace of mind to administrators and IT and provides staff, parents and boarding students with reliable connectivity.