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MF Global

ACCL has celebrated the completion of their largest project to date, which was as a part of the re-design and refurbishment of one of the most prestigious addresses in Canary Wharf for One of London’s leading Financial Powerhouses, MF Global. As a part of their restructuring exercise, MF Global took the opportunity to set new Corporate Standards for their Network, the building already had an excellent Carbon rating which had to be maintained as part of the design process and installation, therefore one of the key considerations was to use contractors and suppliers who had exemplary environmental records.

The Client: MF Global

Formerly known as Man Financial, was a major global financial derivatives broker, or commodities brokerage firm.

The Project:

The installation of 644 miles of Cat6 cable connected to 22,000 data outlets, over four floors of a trading house.

The challenges

Whilst ACCL were given sufficient planning and design time before the project commenced, the window for installation was extremely tight – less than three months, and even that got squeezed towards the end! “We spent a considerable amount of time beforehand perfecting the design with MF Global,” says ACCL MD Wayne Connors. “However, as with many projects the anticipated 18,000 ports grew to 22,000 and the timescales shrank.”

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Design and installation considerations

To service each dealer desk, which has up to six computer systems on it, and the trading desks with up to eight outlets, ACCL designed a special housing to accommodate and manage the cabling requirements. It was important that the air flow around each of the desks was not compromised. So ACCL enhanced the design to include an underfloor air cooling system, ensuring that the installation of the Cat6 cable runs didn’t compromise the movement of the cool air. With significant numbers of power and infrastructure cables running under the floor, it was important to coordinate all these services to maximise the airflow and ensure an even temperature was maintained. Each desk cluster was fitted with a number of conduits, anchored back to a central location. The purpose of this was to identify exactly where each of the cables terminated in order to prevent masses of the floor from being taken up in the future just to find the cable end points.

One of the specifications for the infrastructure project was that it should allow for ease of movement with the ability to reconfigure the arrangements of the desks. This condition was tested very early on when it was decided that the staff sitting on the second and third floors were going to swap places.

“As with any big re-organisation, there was a little bit of confusion whilst waiting on final seating plans to be confirmed,” says Connors. “The swap over was massive – 30 per cent in total. It certainly tested the flexibility of the infrastructure design, and I’m glad to say it performed exceedingly well.”

Further expansion

Now that the trading floors are up and running, MF Global is tackling the second phase of the project and extending the infrastructure from the dealing floors into the rest of the building including the deli area. “It’s all about keeping staff in the building connected,” says Connors. “So connectivity whilst at coffee is important.” MF Global made a decision early on to standardise on fixed networking points with plans to overlay a wireless network at a later date. To support this initiative 1,000 data points have already been installed in ceilings across the four floors.

Successful completion

Our outstanding Team here at ACCL worked closely with the MF Global Team to ensure that the project was brought in on time, to plan and within budget.

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