Developing Space Planning Aids for Central Office Equipment Systems

Once telephone company planners forecast the need for new communications facilities and select the particular system, the space planning task of the network common systems engineer begins. In this endeavor, this Bell Operating Company engineer is primarily con1965 cerned with planning the quantities, placement, and growth of the system equipment in new or cleared building space to meet the ultimate forecast service needs. Many factors must be examined including the relative placement of systems equipment with respect to each other, to other interfacing systems and to building elements such as building columns, walls, cable holes, and the cable entrance facility (CEF). Moreover, this space planner is also partially responsible for planning and coordinating the cable distribution, lighting, and cooling systems for this equipment layout. The entire process of preparing a total office space utilization plan associated with ultimate circuit forecasts requires considerable interaction with the different engineering groups. The primary objectives of this process are to devise an efficient equipment layout with a minimum and manageable amount of interframe cabling, a well-planned growth strategy possessing flexibility for technological or forecast changes, and an attractive and highly functional operating and maintenance environment. The decision to deploy a specific equipment system is usually made 2 to 4 years before the proposed facilities are scheduled for service.1 Since the preparation of a total office plan must precede the tasks of detailed equipment engineering and equipment ordering, manufacturing, installation and testing, the space planner is allotted a relatively short time--usually only a few months--to complete the space planning for a given equipment system.