Adrian Dominican Sisters

There are fifteen buildings on the Adrian Dominican Sisters Campus in Adrian, Michigan; most of which are connected by an underground tunnel system. They range in age from over 100 years to 5 years. On campus are three chapels, two residence halls, a retreat and conference center, a fully equipped and staffed assisted living facility, two schools, a boiler / power house, two maintenance buildings, a three story house, and two administrative buildings including the historic Madden Hall. The Sisters are very proud of their history and of the architecture and beauty of their surroundings. Doing a job the right way in preserving architectural aesthetics in a setting such as this presents an entirely different set of challenges for a structured cabling contractor.

Our business relationship with the Adrian Dominican Sisters predates Echo 24. As NaCom (see "about us" section), we performed two major cabling projects at this most memorable jobsite nestled in the southeastern corner of Michigan. NaCom, under the direction of now president of Echo 24 Tony Gunter, had cabled every building on campus for voice, data, and video. This included an extensive multimode and single mode fiber optic and copper backbone. Tony had kept in touch with David Blohm at ADS and when it was announced that the sisters would be remodeling the 6 story, 3 wing Weber Retreat and Conference Center, David contacted Tony to begin making plans for the voice, data, and video.

Architectural drawings with an electrical engineer's renderings of the cabling had already been created. Once these had been forwarded to Gunter, Echo 24 created a revised cabling plan on AutoCAD format and submitted to David Blohm. One major revision involved increasing the size and quantity of riser conduits. The design required all 1,000 cables to be wired back to a single IDF. In working with the customer and engineer, we were able to design and implement a plan which kept all of the cabling within the 295' distance limitation set forth in EIA/TIA standards.

In addition to the structured cabling, Echo 24 created an overhead paging design. This design was a six zone Valcom system with approximately 70 speakers in the corridors, common areas, and stairwells. On the patios, Echo 24 specified Viking call boxes at the entry doors.

Shortly after commencing this project, it became known that the tunnel leading to the Weber Center from Madden Hall (MDF location) had deteriorated and was collapsing. This affected more than the Weber Center as this tunnel had fiber optic and copper cabling that serviced four other buildings (Boiler / Power House, Roncalli, Maria, and Veritas) on campus. At this point the entire project schedule was in jeopardy. Echo 24 was called upon to find a solution to replace these backbone cables and keep these other four buildings in service all within a three week period. Time was not on their side.

"I remember that I was asked to get three bids for this particular project. One company flat refused to bid. The other produced a bid that was half the cost proposed by Echo 24. It was apparent from their bid that they didn't have a comprehensive understanding of the task at hand. I shudder to think what may have happened had we not hired Echo 24"

David Blohm, Network Administrator - Adrian Dominican Sisters

After much discussion and contemplation, Gunter concluded that a 4" directional bore from outside Madden Hall approximately 300' to the tunnel outside of Roncalli would provide the best solution. This required placement of two handholes and coring into the tunnel on one side and the granite foundation of Madden Hall.

This design called for four innerducts and two mulitpair copper cables to be placed in a 4" duct. All fiber optic cables were to be placed in one innerduct and the other three were left as spares for possible future. The client was interested in achieving the most bandwidth possible on the new multimode fiber, so 50 micron laser optimized 10 Gigahertz fiber optic cable manufactured by General Cable was selected.

Directional boring day was very interesting as the boring rod was no more than 6' in the ground when it started to bow indicating something substantial had been hit. Echo 24 had done its due diligence in calling in underground utility locates and locating other ADS campus owned underground services. After hand digging out the boring head, they discovered it had hit an abandoned building foundation of a building that had been demolished and long forgotten.

As if this wasn't bad enough, the head bounced off the foundation and hit a 4" conduit shattering it. The cable inside wasn't damaged, and so they pulled the cable approximately 700' out, repaired the conduit, and replaced the cable. By the time we could actually begin to bore in a path that wasn't obstructed by that foundation, a full 8 hours had passed. By midnight, the bore had been successfully completed and the muddy mess cleaned up.

Jerry Libs, the maintenance supervisor stayed on site with David Blohm and the Echo 24 crew and helped clean up the mess created when bore gel started to erupt into the parking lot in a few places. Despite this, the bore proved a worthwhile solution as both time and money were saved in not having to saw cut the parking lot and sidewalks or performing restoration of the grounds.

The following week, all of the fiber optic and copper cables had been pulled through the new duct, terminated and tested. This particular milestone deadline had been met.

As the project progressed, Echo 24 was asked to design a CCTV camera system to provide surveillance at the three ground floor entry doors and two locations on the large patio. The intent was to provide both security and safety for the residents. Not only did they want the receptionist to see who was entering the building, they wanted to be able to monitor certain staircases in the event an elderly resident had a fall. An 80 GB 6-channel IP enabled digital video recorder was installed in the MDF along with a monitor. Although 5 each, 5" monitors were placed at the receptionist desk, key employees would be able to access the system and see what was on the cameras from their computer desktops anywhere on campus.

Echo 24 performed this work from both it's Kalamazoo office and the home office in Reynoldsburg. The Adrian Dominican Sisters campus is two hours from the nearest office in Kalamazoo, so Echo 24 rented an apartment to house the crew in Adrian for the year it took to complete this project.