Planning IT in New Spaces

At Sundog, we’re adjusting our office space, so this has given me an excellent opportunity to be able to plan out all of my IT “desires” for that space, instead of having to try and work with what was planned before. Here are some things I’ve learned in this process.

First, I’ve re-learned that what you budget for a new construction project will come up short of what it actually costs. Envisioning where networking jacks, plugins, and video terminals will be on a blueprint is different than walking through the space and seeing where they will actually be.

Next thing - network or data jacks. Even in our wireless world today, physical jacks are still needed. And one can’t really plan for too many. I started out with 48, but quickly realized that I’d need an extra 24 on top of that. It’s better to have them put in when construction is still going on than trying to fish in new lines in an already sealed up wall.

Conduits are a very good thing. Have your electrician install them wherever you think you may need to run cable in the future. Running a cable under the floor or in a wall while trying to avoid other conduit or insulation just plane sucks. Even if they’re going to be empty for a while, having the capability to quickly add a cable somewhere will help keep your space at least a little future-proof.

Since IT can be used even in areas of your own branding and marketing, plan the space so that you can easily incorporate such things into the area. For instance, we have LCD TV’s in our hallways when you step out of the elevator. The existing one is quite hard to get to in order to change out ports and such, so when planning the new one, I made sure we had conduit installed and I’ll be getting equipment and adapters that will help in the future if we ever need access to the back of the TV.

And one last note - If I could go back and start this process over again, I’m almost sure there would be 100 things I would change. However, I know the space is planned by me this time - so I can only get mad at myself. And I could use some more humbling experiences anyway :)

If you get the opportunity, plan the space you’re moving or expanding into to be easy for you to make changes or updates. It will help alleviate headaches for both you and the rest of your company in the future.