Integration of ICT with the built environment

Does ICT always seem to be a last minute thought, bolted onto the building and not properly integrated? Our experience of working on over forty school build projects has allowed us to find solutions to these and many other integration issues:

• Insufficient space allocation for the size and number of server and hub rooms, meaning they will not accommodate either the equipment or support the cabling design parameters.
• The energy consumption of the selected ICT equipment is at odds with the power and cooling design of the M&E Solution.
• Teaching spaces become a mass of cables and trunking as insufficient thought is given to the requirements of powering laptops, feeding video to the projector and delivering audio.
• The design team does not work effectively meaning that the designs for ICT, M&E and FFE are carried out in isolation of each other leading to important integration issues being overlooked and costly, last minute alterations once the building is under construction.

Novatia has helped clients to find practical ways to address these issues through our ICT Integration Design Guides and Routemap methodology that ensures each aspect of the ICT Solution is fully considered in the context of the overall design active an active participant in the design team.

If your school would benefit from expert support to develop a fully integrated ICT Solution, take a look at the RSA Case Study and BBC report opposite and please contact us to discuss this further.