Trans-Pennine Initiative Fibre Interface Point (FIP) York

Project/Framework Overview

The TPI project has been funded to date by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to provide a high-capacity future-proofed digital telecoms transmission backbone along the Trans-Pennine corridor. DCMS announced a major initiative to promote investment in extending local full fibre across the UK to deliver faster and more reliable broadband. One of the aspirations for the TPI project is to provide network capacity to improve rural broadband. A 432 OF trunk cable has been installed between Manchester Piccadilly and York Railway Operations Centre (ROC), with spurs into Leeds Station core node, Leeds and Manchester Data Centres.

The purpose of the FIP is to provide interconnection points for third party operators, which can be linked to either Manchester or Leeds Data Centres, or any other preferred FIP. The works consisted of de-vegetation, route renovation, new route installation (Anderlite), buried duct route installation, chamber installation (Stakka Chambers), palisade fencing, fibre cable installation, termination, splicing and testing of fibre cable and provision of the Health and Safety. The location of the work was adjacent to the Network Rail ROC and is in support of planned future development of the old maintenance shed site.

Delivery and Innovation

• Works were delivered using in-house teams based in and around Manchester
• OCU was appointed as Principal Contractor
• OCU was responsible for civils and telecoms designs
• OCU adopted a collaborative approach working with Network Rail and Local Highway Authorities at the preconstruction phase to develop the detailed design and risk mitigations allowing the project to be delivered on time and to budget
• OCU introduced the Ruggedized Fibre Access Terminal on Network Rail Infrastructure that brings the benefits of optical technology to challenging environments providing more bandwidth, more distance, and more performance.

Project/Framework KPI’s

• Aspirational key dates were detailed within the Contract documentation and a phased delivery approach was employed to ensure Network Rail expectations were managed effectively.
• During the GRIP 5 Stage, Network Rail aligned Key Performance Indicators with other projects, (Trans- Pennine Initiative). These KPIs were delivered to plan 
• Works delivered with no accidents or incidents, and delivered ahead of programme
• We implemented a proactive management and communications strategy to assure that all stakeholders, both internal and external, were engaged throughout the delivery of the programme.