Welcome back, Hopkins! It's snowing here again in Baltimore, but (hopefully) spring is on its way and will arrive sooner rather than later. Then the construction that has disrupted traffic down North Charles Street can begin again!
The extremely wet winter has completely obliterated the already tight schedule that the city of Baltimore imposed on the North Charles Street Reconstruction Project. It is a $28 million undertaking that will renovate and beautify the Charles Street area around the Johns Hopkins campus, making it safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. Johns Hopkins University has a financial interest in the successful completion of this project, having donated part of the $28 million, but it certainly will not be done before the start of the 2014 fall semester.
Johns Hopkins Information Technology Department (IT@JH) has had a large, albeit quiet, role in the renovation project. As you can imagine, there are hundreds of miles of wires, cables, and conduits running underneath the tar on Charles Street. In order to proceed with construction, every single one of those cables had to be inspected. Some communications cables were 40 years old, but replacing them could also mean a lack of service. So how do you replace a system without removing it?
The answer is you relocate them, and the daunting task was assigned to the Homewood Networking Team. Their team worked closely with JHU Facilities to assemble an expert team to take stock of the extensive wire system and copper assets located below the street. In an effort to avoid such issues the next time construction is imminent, the team also designed and built two 8-way conduits to streamline communications wires and cables. Now that the Northern part of the project has basically concluded, the Southern half will be a relatively simple redundancy.
The amount of work that this team put into this project is astounding, but what makes it truly exceptional is the fact that there was virtually no downtime among any of the affected systems. In total 500 fiber connections were relocated. Most of the changes were made during the early morning hours, when demand on the systems was minimal, which speaks to a special level of dedication in itself.
From all of the members of the Hopkins community, we say a sincere thank you to the members of these task forces, who performed to the highest standards of ingenuity. For all those seeking more information regarding the overall Charles Street project, visit this site: http://www.charlesstreetreconstruction.com/
We all hope to see the construction completed soon, but first we shall wait for spring. Happy first week back!
The extremely wet winter has completely obliterated the already tight schedule that the city of Baltimore imposed on the North Charles Street Reconstruction Project. It is a $28 million undertaking that will renovate and beautify the Charles Street area around the Johns Hopkins campus, making it safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. Johns Hopkins University has a financial interest in the successful completion of this project, having donated part of the $28 million, but it certainly will not be done before the start of the 2014 fall semester.
Johns Hopkins Information Technology Department (IT@JH) has had a large, albeit quiet, role in the renovation project. As you can imagine, there are hundreds of miles of wires, cables, and conduits running underneath the tar on Charles Street. In order to proceed with construction, every single one of those cables had to be inspected. Some communications cables were 40 years old, but replacing them could also mean a lack of service. So how do you replace a system without removing it?
The answer is you relocate them, and the daunting task was assigned to the Homewood Networking Team. Their team worked closely with JHU Facilities to assemble an expert team to take stock of the extensive wire system and copper assets located below the street. In an effort to avoid such issues the next time construction is imminent, the team also designed and built two 8-way conduits to streamline communications wires and cables. Now that the Northern part of the project has basically concluded, the Southern half will be a relatively simple redundancy.
The amount of work that this team put into this project is astounding, but what makes it truly exceptional is the fact that there was virtually no downtime among any of the affected systems. In total 500 fiber connections were relocated. Most of the changes were made during the early morning hours, when demand on the systems was minimal, which speaks to a special level of dedication in itself.
From all of the members of the Hopkins community, we say a sincere thank you to the members of these task forces, who performed to the highest standards of ingenuity. For all those seeking more information regarding the overall Charles Street project, visit this site: http://www.charlesstreetreconstruction.com/
We all hope to see the construction completed soon, but first we shall wait for spring. Happy first week back!
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