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NEWSLETTER
Issue 116
November 2014
Index
Frank Kler re-joins the FIA Council
FIA AIS Seminars - October 2014
AIS Membership Highlights
FIA AIS Seminars - Xmas 2014
FIA Accredited Installers - the official list November 2014
FIA AGM 2014
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Help celebrate the 25 Anniversary of the FIA
FIA Membership - and infringements
Use the FIA web-site to buy BS standards
FIA Member Search Engine goes live
FIA Member Web-site Access
FIA Council e-mail addresses
The Class System is Dead
Finally! - An Accredited Installer Scheme that Delivers
THE FIBREOPTIC INDUSTRY
ASSOCIATION
Tel: +44 (0)1763 273039
Fax: +44 (0)1763 273255
Email: secretary@fia-online.co.uk
Head Office: The Manor House,
BUNTINGFORD, Hertfordshire SG9 9AB
United Kingdom
FIA @ 25
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A warm welcome
to the following
NEW MEMBERS
Corporate
UK DATA CABLING LIMITED
NORBECK LIMITED
CSIC (Cambridge Centre for Smart
Infrastructure and Construction)
Frank Kler re-joins the FIA Council
Following his recent move to Blue Helix, the FIA Council was pleased to
welcome Frank Kler back as Director of External Installations. He was coth
opted to the Council at their meeting on 16 October 2014 and will have to
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stand for formal election at the FIA Annual General Meeting on 4 December
2014.
A warm welcome back
to the following
MEMBER
He is keen to pursue the original agenda outlined at the time he was forced
to resign in 2013. This agenda, which is detailed on the web-site, is even
more relevant now due to the publication of BS EN 50174-3 (reported in the
last Newsletter) which has to be understood and interpreted in conjunction
with UK national and local regulations surrounding civil works in public
spaces - and on private premises.
Corporate
DACC EUROPE LIMITED
FIA Summer Seminar 2014 Seminar Papers - go to www.fia-online.co.uk/epresentations.htm
If you wish to sponsor a future Newsletter please contact the FIA Secretary
NEW SEARCH ENGINE
Keep your data up-to-date
Members should note that the new Membership Search Engine is now operational on
the FIA web-site. This allows users to search for specific approvals, products and
services that members are able to offer. Please check your data on-line – if it is out of
date then let the FIA Secretary know as soon as possible.
FIBREOPTIC INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
The FIA is a Company Limited by Guarantee
Management Council
Industry Sector Directors
Paul Bateson - Chairman
(Optical Test and Calibration Ltd.)
John Marson - Commercial Director and Vice Chairman
(Twistnet Communications Ltd.)
Paul Bateson - Test & Measurement
John Colton - Training
(Lucid Optical Services Ltd.)
Lee Funnell - Marketing
(The Siemon Company)
Mike Gilmore - Standards Director and Treasurer
(The Cabling Partnership - e-Ready Building Ltd.)
Jonathan Lewis - Technical Director
(Huber & Suhner)
Alan Bullen - Internal installations
(Lynx Networks plc.)
Frank Kler - External installations
(Blue Helix Ltd.)
Simon Comben - MoD Liaison
(Metz Connect GmbH)
NEWSLETTER
Issue 116
November 2014
F IA
FIA AIS Seminars - October 2014
The FIA Council would like to thank Metz Connect GmbH and Blue Helix
Limited for respectively sponsoring and accommodating the two FIA AIS
seminars in October 2014.
They focussed on the work to be undertaken in the area of External
Installations and featured presentations by Alan Bullen, Mike Gilmore and
Frank Kler. AIS members were also reminded that the most common form
of litigation for cable installers tended to be associated with cable damage and that the FIA Arbitration Scheme was open to all involved in order to try
to find fair and appropriate measures for resolving disputes.
The presentations are to be found at
www.fia-online.co.uk/eais-installer-03.htm
but AIS members will require their AIS Username and Password.
AIS Membership Highlights
The latest FIA member to be accepted as
Accredited Installers is J Brand Limited. One
more is waiting in the wings taking to the total to
twenty-five. The full list can be seen below.
Equally importantly, all those completing their first
year of accreditation have renewed for a further 12
months. This reflects the fact that the support
offered to them is seen as valuable.
This is celebrated in the article on page 6.
As usual, the seminars allow members to identify gaps in knowledge which
the FIA may be able to fill. One in particular was highlighted in October.
This was the provision by the FIA External Installations Directorate of a
checklist to assist in the selection of civil works contractors. We hope to
action this as soon as possible.
In the interim, if there are any other issues that you wish to highlight - then
join the AIS and get your point across to the Council.
The popularity of the scheme has two further
benefits - firstly it has enabled the annual fees to
be reduced to £195 + VAT and, as we had hoped,
the number of accreditations is being reflected in
an increased number of tenders which are
mandating AIS membership. If you are interested
in joining the scheme, contact the AIS Director,
Alan Bullen.
FIA AIS Seminars - Xmas 2014
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The Christmas seminars for AIS members are scheduled for 17 and 18 December 2014. Members will receive invites from the FIA
Secretariat in due course. We hope to see you there to celebrate an excellent year for the Accredited Installer Scheme.
The AIS Seminars provide the FIA Council with one of the few opportunities to engage with the membership of the Association and it
is apparent that many individuals are not aware of the location of the most basic information on the FIA web-site - and quite a
substantial majority are not regular users of the “members-only” side of the site which is where are the free information is held.
This will be addressed at the forthcoming seminars in December and at each of the subsequent events.
FIA Accredited Installers - the official list November 2014
FIBREOPTIC INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION
FIA
Accredited Installer Scheme
ABM ELECTRICAL CONTRACTING LTD.
ADVANCED COMMUNICATIONS
CABLE DYNAMICS LIMITED
CIS LTD
COMPUTER-LINKS LTD
FES LTD.
GCL LTD.
HAMPTON TECHNICAL SERVICES LTD
HUNTER COMMUNICATION SERVICES LTD
INFINET DATACOMS LTD.
INTERCONNECT NETWORK SYSTEMS LTD
ITM COMMUNICATIONS LTD
J BRAND LIMITED
LYNX NETWORKS plc.
NETWORX 3 LTD
OPEN NETWORK ASSOCIATES LIMITED
PARAGON DATA SERVICES LTD.
PR POWER INSTALLATIONS
RAMPTEC LIMITED
RE-MARK GROUP
THE KIRBY GROUP
TWISTNET COMMUNICATIONS LTD.
WACHTER LTD
WIRRAL INSTALLATIONS LIMITED
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NEWSLETTER
Issue 116
November 2014
F IA
FIA AGM 2014
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The FIA AGM for 2014 will be held at 11.30 am on Thursday 4 December 2014 at the usual location: The Saracens Head,
Towcester, near Northampton.
Paperwork has been despatched to all members along with voting proxy and Council member nomination forms.
There is such a thing as “a free lunch” and the FIA Council hope that you will be able to attend to enjoy it.
…………….
The Minutes of the last AGM and the audited accounts for 2012-2013 are to be found on the FIA web-site at http://www.fiaonline.co.uk/eoverview.htm. This year’s information will be circulated to all members at the event in accordance with normal
business practice and then uploaded to this url in January 2015.
Help celebrate the 25th Anniversary of
the FIA
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In 2015, the FIA celebrates its 25 anniversary - its Silver Jubilee. We hope
to mark this by a number of landmark events including the Summer Seminar
2015.
The intention is to hold the event on Wednesday 3rd June & Thursday 4th
June 2015. These dates should be put into your diaries now. The location which will be closely linked to the heritage of the Fibreoptic Industry
Association - will be announced in the near future and we hope to invite
some major industry figures to present at the event.
FIA @ 25
The Council look forward to hearing from members for other ways of marking
this landmark. If you have any great ideas then please contact the
Secretariat (secretary@fia-online.co.uk).
FIA Membership - and infringements
Perhaps it is a sign of the economic woes of recent times, but it is an unfortunate fact that organisations are joining the FIA and
then resigning after a year or two but then continuing to advertise their membership on web-pages, letterheads and vehicles. This
does not only apply to membership logos but also to other FIA schemes such as the Approval and Accreditation systems.
Members will notice a more hard-line tone being taken in relation to membership renewal. In the past the FIA has been relatively
relaxed about on-time payment of renewal invoices but this has now been tightened up and you will see that future invoices and
associated documentation will clearly stipulate the implications for members of a failure to renew (or a long delayed payment for
renewal) while advertising continued membership which has not been paid for. Indeed, if it is found that non-members are
advertising their membership after a reasonable time has elapsed (consistent with updating their company information) not only will
their actions be reported in this Newsletter but they will be pursued via legal process for the membership fees that would be
applicable until the date they finally act correctly.
This may seem harsh but when viewed from the perspective of honest members such behaviour is fraudulent. The FIA Commercial
Director, John Marson, is always keen to hear of such infringements and welcomes any complaints by paid-up members of the
liberties taken by others. Moreover, he pursues the fraudulent organisations without mercy.
Use the FIA web-site to buy BS standards
The FIA are BSI Affiliates – meaning that anyone visiting the FIA web-site can click on the link to the BSI
web-site and any purchase made of standards, in either paper or electronic format, results in a small
payment being made from BSI to the FIA (at no cost to the purchaser).
The FIA have now rebuilt this linkage to directly purchase standards from BSI. If you wish to buy a
standard, even if your company is already a member of BSI, please use the FIA web-site - because the
FIA receives a small percentage of your purchase price - and any discounts you normally receive will also
be applied.
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NEWSLETTER
Issue 116
November 2014
F IA
This Newsletter is provided as a means of maintaining
communication between and with our Members.
Articles, product information, news items etc. are always
welcome.
Please send the information via email (jpg illustrations) to Jane
Morrison via the FIA Secretariat
Are you an FIA member?
Have you got any NEWS?
FIA Member Search Engine goes live
In the last Newsletter we announced that the on-line search engine had gone live. By
clicking on “MEMBERSHIP SEARCH ENGINE” you can find the full membership list or by
using the advanced search facility you can hone down your search by a members status,
approvals, activities, products and services.
This system allows members logos (150 pixels x 100 pixels) to be included within the listing.
The on-line database at the heart of the search engine will, in the medium term, also enable
the FIA Secretary to control members’ access to the members-only part of the web-site.
Please send your
company logos to the
FIA Secretary
.jpg
150 pixels x 100 pixels
max.
FIA Council e-mail addresses
FIA Member
Chairman and Test & Measurement Director: chair@fia-online.co.uk
Web-site Access
Secretary (Jane Morrison): secretary@fia-online.co.uk
It has become apparent that many employees
of FIA members are not provided with access
to the member’s side of the web-site. This is
seen by the FIA Council as being a major
obstacle to spreading the good practices
defined by the FIA with member’s businesses
– and is a cause for concern.
Commercial Director: commercial@fia-online.co.uk
As a result we call on the
Principal Contacts in each member
company to ensure that FIA usernames and
passwords are passed to all relevant
personnel in their organisations.
Training Director: training@fia-online.co.uk
Marketing Director: marketing@fia-online.co.uk
Standards Director: standards@fia-online.co.uk
Technical Director: technical@fia-online.co.uk
Internal Installations Director: installation@fia-online.co.uk
External Installations Director: external@fia-online.co.uk
MoD Liaison: defence@fia-online.co.uk
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NEWSLETTER
Issue 116
November 2014
F IA
The Class System is Dead
at least for optical fibre cabling
Mike Gilmore, Director, STANDARDS@fia
for Netcomms Europe (October 2014)
Those readers “au fait” with ISO/IEC 11801 and EN 50173 standards for generic cabling design will recognise the concept of cabling
“channels” and “links” and the application of the term “Class” when referring to the requirements that apply to those channels.
Class has been applied to copper since the earliest editions of the standards and was extended to optical fibre cabling in 2001/2002.
However, it has always been a bone of contention that the application of Classes to optical fibre was not directly equivalent to its use
for copper - and was recognised as the best of a lot of worse solutions. Finally, it has been agreed to remove the optical fibre
Classes from the next generation of the standards - unless someone comes up with a better idea which fixes the problems of the
existing solution.
To explain the fundamental problem with the optical fibre Classes we have to review the multiple functions of the cabling Classes.
Its first objective was for each Class to define a performance envelope within which one or more network applications could be
grouped.
If we look at the copper Classes, any application of Class D would operate over a Class D channel. As each Class (A to FA) is
hierarchical, a Class D would also support applications of Class A, B and C. As new applications were developed we had to create
new channel Classes such as Class EA to support 10GBASE-T. On the odd occasion we drifted away from this concept by creating
new Classes to reflect the then “state-of-the-art” cabling. Examples of this were Classes E, F and F A. This resulted in Classes
without an application mapping - but this it not a fundamental flaw of the Class system. However, one critical feature of the copper
Class concept was that the performance envelope was length independent - instead the performance envelope was defined by
transmission parameters such as attenuation, NEXT and return loss. By comparison the optical fibre Classes were defined by
attenuation and, indeed, by length. We started with OF-300, OF-500 and OF-2000 into which the existing applications were grouped
and for which there was a hierarchy with OF-2000 applications being able to operate over OF-500 channels. So far so good!
However, the reader might be encouraged to ask why, if copper channels were not length dependent what made it necessary to use
length for the optical fibre equivalent? The answer is that the primary length dependent transmission parameter for optical fibre is
bandwidth and it is very difficult to measure accurately for installed cabling. As a result the application standards bodies such as
IEEE had never specified a requirement - instead they had specified how far the application would operate over an optical fibre of a
known bandwidth. So OF-300 applications were those that were stated as being supportable over 300 metres. Equally importantly,
because the applications standards bodies had not defined bandwidth requirements, the Class of a given application had to be
product specific - so 1000BASE-SX was a Class OF-500 application using OM2 50/125 mm optical fibre but was in the OF-500 group
for the OM1 equivalent. This is wholly contrary to the copper concept where the Class is component independent.
The second intention was for each Class to define a performance envelope to assess compliance.
Copper channels are assessed against a limit for each of the necessary transmission parameters e.g. a maximum attenuation 24 dB
at 100MHz for a Class D channel. However, optical fibre channels are required to be design-compliant i.e. the limit depends on the
length and the number of splices and connections within the channel. So although the performance envelope for an OF-500 channel
is 3,25 dB, a channel of length 250 m would not be assessed against this value - one would have to calculate the limit based on the
length. The reason for this is to avoid the use of non-compliant components but this resulted in most designers ignoring the optical
fibre Class concept completely because their implementation and acceptance rules had not changed at all.
The final nail-in-the-coffin has been the rapid reduction of, and the multiplicity, of maximum channel lengths using different optical
fibre types.
So, someone unless comes up with a bright idea, it has been decided to remove the concept of optical fibre cabling Classes but to
retain the requirement that “the attenuation of channels at a specified wavelength shall not exceed the sum of the specified
attenuation values for the components at that wavelength (where the attenuation of a length of optical fibre cable is calculated from
its attenuation coefficient multiplied by its length)”. It is hoped that this will be the end of an unhelpful diversion in the life of the
generic cabling standards.
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NEWSLETTER
Issue 116
November 2014
F IA
Finally! - An Accredited Installer Scheme that Delivers
Mike Gilmore, Director, STANDARDS@fia
for Netcomms Europe (September 2014)
The “IT” world has repeatedly tried to develop an effective Approved Installer scheme. It would appear that the Fibreoptic Industry
Association has finally managed to create a scheme which has attracted a substantial percentage of its members to register as
Accredited Installers, has obtained supply chain endorsement and is now being referenced in contract documentation. This article
summarises the requirements of the scheme and the opportunities offered by it - following the first anniversary of its operation in
June 2014.
For as long as I can remember, trade associations have initiated, advertised and funded schemes that have “withered on the vine”.
The Fibreoptic Industry Association had produced at least two versions of their Approved Installer Scheme which failed to attain
critical mass and therefore were of no value to clients with the result that most Approved Installers failed to renew their approval in
subsequent years.
By comparison, the FIA Accredited Installer Scheme - initiated in early 2013 and fully operational by June of that year - has been
incredibly successful. Almost 25% of the 103 FIA members who quote “Installation” as their primary activity are now registered
under the scheme. Equally importantly, all those registered for the first year have retained their accreditation for the second year and
the number of Accredited Installers continues to grow on a monthly basis.
So what has introduced this different level of impetus to this scheme where so many others have failed? It is true that supply chain
endorsement has helped. Alan Bullen, the responsible FIA Director, has worked hard to obtain that endorsement and the
recognition of the scheme in client’s contract documentation is also very much a reflection of his hard work. That being said, there is
a huge amount of chicken-and-egg involved i.e. installers are not going to join a scheme that clients don’t recognise and client aren’t
going to recognise a scheme with only a small number of accredited companies.
So there has to be something else that encouraged the initial uptake of the scheme ….. and that has been the demand for low cost
“continuing professional development” as part of the obligation of Accredited Installers to commit to regular attendance at quarterly
seminars provided at low cost, essentially free-of-charge, by the FIA.
Each quarter, the FIA provides two seminars addressing different aspects of installation quality assurance and technical expertise.
By attending these seminars, Accredited Installers obtain a drip-feed of good practice, they learn to navigate around the FIA web-site
to obtain the correct technical documentation related to specific aspects of installation and… most importantly, they have a direct
interaction with FIA Directors in installation, technical and standard development roles. That interaction empowers the installers to
ask questions and highlight areas which may require further explanation in the form of FIA White Papers and similar documents.
Accredited Installers have their own private area of the FIA web-site where any documents created in response to their needs are
stored.
In the coming year the FIA Installation Directorate is developing its external installations content including its all-important interrelationship with the “civils” world. This will extend the type of information we can provide at the AIS seminars.
The AIS is part of the FIA Risk Reduction Programme umbrella under which the FIA believes that reduction of risk is the prime
quality assurance driver for installations of cabling - minimising the probability of complaints and litigation - because if installers
minimise the levels of risk to themselves then they also minimise the risk to their customers and vice versa. The obligated
commitment of the Accredited Installer to increase their skill-sets and quality assurance controls should be reflected in a reduction in
risk to their clients.
In response, the FIA Arbitration Scheme is offered to Accredited Installers and their clients free of charge and without prejudice in
situations where one or the other is unhappy with an installation outcome. This offers both parties a cost-effective way of obtaining a
resolution without the need to “get legal” with all the costs that such a process involves.
The FIA AIS provides a good model for “non-fibre” installations but unfortunately there is no effective industry association addressing
that part of the market. As a result, and in recognition of the fact that most installers undertake IT installations of both copper and
optical media, the FIA attempts to provide information that is general in scope, particular in relation to installation quality assurance.
So being an Accredited Installer under the FIA scheme is also a good predictor of their commitment to installation skills and
procedures in other technology areas.
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