354: Return to AT from Wilkie and FH

This pseudo-project was to track the work involved in our return from Forrest Hill and Wilkie Building to Appleton Tower. Initially this was expected to be pretty much just a case of reinstating the previously-existing network, though with some switch upgrades. However, the decision (made elsewhere) to defer the return for a year to allow for some of the interior to be remodelled meant the scope of the project had to expand.

Note that there was a separate project to track the Infrastructure Unit's members' move to offices in Appleton Tower. Note also that this project only accounts for the Infrastructure Unit's contribution to the return to Appleton Tower. Many other people also contributed, and this will be accounted for elsewhere.

General Overview

The project proceeded in a number of phases:

  1. To start off, there was a series of design meetings, analogous to those for Forrest Hill, though rather less intensive as there was not intended to be such a major remodelling. For Appleton Tower we were working within the constraints of the existing wiring, and had much less scope to have things added. Mostly it was a case of making sure that necessary things weren't removed by accident or lack of awareness. Overall, this took about two weeks of work, spread over the period.
  2. Towards the end of this, and overlapping slightly, the network design was re-checked, and new switches procured and set up ready to be installed. It had previously been decided that a complete new set of switches should be used, as those that had been in service before were either old and missing some features (2910s, 2610s), or obsolete (4208s, 2626s). The design used was the two-level one which had previously worked well for ATL3, ATL4 and ATL5. All of the Infrastructure Unit's members were involved. We used a wiki page, put together by Ian, to track this, having made successful use of this method on previous occasions. Setup was done in the Forum server room, by patching through the two links for the 9atN switches and setting those up to provide a temporary "Appleton Tower" environment to which the rest of the switches could be connected, one at a time. (The level-9 switches were used for this, as it was expected that ATL9 would be the last floor to be occupied, and so these two switches could be left until all of the rest had been set up ready to be installed.) Design, procuring the switches, checking deliveries, and setting up all the switches, including the profiles, configurations, and the tracking page, took about another three weeks of effort.
  3. After the (building) design was done and the contract let there was a three-weekly series of "progress" meetings involving all of the various groups involved in the contract. There were around 15 of these, so around another week of work once the various actions and other things to check are factored in.
  4. As the contract neared completion, there was a series of School meetings, held roughly every other week. Overall there were about 20 of these, so again around another week of work once the various actions and other things to check are factored in. (Other Units may well have a different experience and amount of time to add to their own accounts!)
  5. Finally, just before reoccupation we handed all of the network kit over to the technicians to install, after which it was "just" a case of ensuring it was all working properly, and making necessary changes and adjustments, often on an ad hoc basis. Unfortunately, due to the rather compressed nature of the contract and the very short window of opportunity for us to move into the building, there turned out to be rather a lot of these, which required constant checking with the users and the contractor to ensure that things were as close to the way we wanted as we could get. This remaining work took around another three weeks.

(Aside: we left the Forrest Hill network in situ for IS to take over and run in their own way. At the time of writing we are actually still occupying at least some of Wilkie Building, and expect to do so until the new Bayes (DTI) building is occupied.)

Comments

Theon currently imposes a limit of three developers per project, and as a result it was not possible to capture Jennifer's involvement in the switch setup. This does show in the wiki page, however, and a reasonable estimate is included here.

Some other "infrastructure" work was done relating to the return to AT by other Units which arguably should have been part of this project. However, even had it been hoped to account for the work here, the above limitation, which was already causing a problem, would have made this impossible. That time will therefore have to be accounted for elsewhere. (Arguably there should have been an "umbrella" project covering this one as well as those. We should consider this when we occupy our parts of the Bayes building.)

Time

Note that nowhere here is the considerable amount of technician-time required accounted for; and work done by other Units is assumed to be accounted for by them elsewhere. As noted above, we couldn't even add all of our own time to Theon, so it would certainly not have been possible to add other Units' time too.

Overall, the project took around 10 weeks of Infrastructure Unit effort, broken down as noted above. This is probably a touch higher than expected, based on experience for Forrest Hill. That's probably partly due to us not having a clean slate, and therefore having to work within and against the constraints of the existing cable plant, partly due to things being missed or in the wrong place as a result of prior usage, and partly due to additions such as level 9.