Project - Head Office Relocation and Plant Consolidation

To reduce on overheads and right-size the plant to office floor ratio, the business consolidated two plants into one, relocating to a larger building. Technology was sourced considering the re-purposing of equipment already in use or in storage.

Goal: Ensure the successful migration of the headquarter offices to a new location with zero downtime and no loss of customer communications

The IT Team developed the telecommunications, paging, and network infrastructure necessary to support all business activities at the new location. At this company, my IT Department was responsible from the telephone cabinet out, meaning that we could quickly add new or retire phones ourselves using the provided telephone cabling. To help ensure rapid deployment of new telephones throughout the company, we installed telephony BIX ports both by the telephone cabinet and in the plant area, allowing us to quickly move telephone equipment by simply swapping wires on the BIX ports. This is the same technique used by contractors.

To maximize uptime, we coordinated the change-over of the telecommunication systems and network with the physical office move. As I was available, I assisted in the coordination of the physical move to ensure that furniture and equipment were appropriately relocated, later working with the Network Administrator to ensure that all equipment was installed and tested accordingly. Because we moved from one telephone exchange to another (564 to 625) we could not transfer our old phone number directly to the new location, so we used Call Forwarding to forward incoming calls from the old telephone numbers to the new ones, helping to ensure zero downtime for any customer communications.We distributed the new numbers to the customer base, working to phase out the older numbers after a few years.

I also assisted the Plant Manager with physical security, working to install alarm and video surveillance systems, and assisting in the management of keys and tumblers for offices and entrances. As well, IT was charged with the provisioning of plant chime, paging, and break time systems, with the company opting to install a custom made break time system that played music throughout the breaks over the plant speakers. Music was played from CD's in a CD carousal and different colored outdoor lights were used to help employees visually identify break times when they were outdoors.

We met our goal of zero downtime allocation for information and communication systems. Customers continued to send faxes, emails, and leave messages during the course of the move, which happened after hours.

Shortly after this project was completed, I became responsible for the installation of a fence surrounding the perimeter. The company was loading trailers for shipment overseas and was considering moving towards creating a C-TPAT compliant shipping area to help expedite overseas shipments. To support this possible future activity, I ensured that the supplied fence was compatible with an upgrade that would make the fence C-TPAT compliant, at a 10% cost increase from one that could not meet compliance.