How office design can influence cable management

Good cable management isn't just a matter of a well thought out wiring closet design. It can also be influenced by what goes on in the office environment. The seemingly unrelated matters of office furniture and flooring should also be considered at the design stage to potentially contribute to a useful long term cable management strategy for the benefit of the building occupant.

Cable management in furniture

At the other end of the cable runs are workstations - not as complex as wiring closets, but the potential for signal degradation is just as high. What should the well-accessorised office furniture of tomorrow provide to manage copper and fibre-optic cabling? According to office furniture manufacturer Thinking Ergonomix, cable tidiness and OHS demand cables be stored neatly, out of the way and properly segregated to maintain data integrity. But furniture solutions also need to accommodate future requirements such as reconfiguration of furniture layouts and additional cabling, all as easily as possible and with minimal waste. Modular wiring options integrated into the furniture provide flexibility that enable elements to be re-used while reducing on-site installation time.

"Many desking products have cable management systems which fix to or sit in centrally running beams that can accept cables, plugs and transformers," states Matthew Cramsie, industrial designer at Thinking Ergonomix. "One of our innovative products is a removable cable channel that can run along both the beams and legs of desks and tables. Used with or without cable ports, such systems offer sophisticated forms of cable management and can be complemented with a variety of cable holders, snakes and trunking."

"These latest solutions are designed to provide fully integrated cable management systems including options for power boxes, cable trays, cable umbilicals and clips. They're designed to fit securely into the worktop with access from both sides of the table via a lid that's hinged for immediate and easy access. This 'ready-to-go' power solution can be connected to floor, wall or ceiling power sources and can be used on all table or desk base systems."

Cramsie suggests that cable tracks fixed under the worktop provide excellent segregation between power and data cables, while also accommodating surplus cable storage: "Cables can enter via floor-feed, walls or skirting ducts and travel vertically up the legs and into cable tracks and/or clips to provide a safe, semi-permanent housing. Cable guides can also enable cables to travel from one worktop to another with proper bending radius to avoid disrupting service flow".

Cable management in the floor

Ordinarily, cabling is routed to work stations above a suspended ceiling in amongst HVAC ducts, sprinkler pipes, ceiling stringers, electrical cables, light fittings and other services. While this works for most cases, it can be limiting in high churn environments, where modular furniture is specifically used to facilitate easy and frequent dismantling and reassembly. If cabling is routed via the ceiling, the process becomes lengthy and counter-productive. An alternative that facilitates ease of reconfiguration is under-floor cabling - not traditional 'post-and-pedestal' computer flooring, but low-profile moulded plastic flooring that's common in Europe to reticulate power and data cabling.

I came across the locally designed and manufactured under-floor cable trunking system Crosstrack when I wrote the 'Robert Bosch' case study. I was impressed by how well it facilitated the office dynamics of Bosch, so I contacted inventor Michael Boyd to find out more about it. Boyd is an architect and it was the constant challenge of dealing with office churn that impelled him to develop Crosstrack, which has been hugely successful elsewhere in the world, to the point where a large European electrical accessories company purchased global rights to the product.

Boyd explains the rationale behind his product: "Crosstrack is simply an alternative to traditional cabling distribution systems like ceiling trays to drop-points (or poke-throughs from the ceiling beneath), perimeter wall trunking, in-floor conduit and raised access floor.

"I set out to remove some of the long-term inflexibilities of these traditional systems in handling office dynamics, but it also alleviated some installation problems like tight bends through cramped spaces, excessive pull-tension and sheath damage, all of which can degrade signal performance.

"Raised flooring is usually more expensive to install, but it lowers a facility's whole-of-life costs, due to its flexibility for change that saves considerable money for the end user in the long term. Wiring that's easily installed during construction may end up being difficult to access when the facility is operational, so more costs are incurred and business disrupted.

"Traditional raised access flooring works in exchanges and date centres where many services like HVAC, plumbing, power and comms wiring are run sub-floor in spaces typically 150 - 600 mm deep. But that much sub-floor space is unnecessary in normal offices, so while it makes accessing the cabling easier, it also entails complications like slab set-downs, ramps and steps, which reduces the amount of useable floor area and of course adds enormously to cost.

"Crosstrack, on the other hand, is a low-height integrated cable management platform that's just 80 mm high with inbuilt ducts for power and comms cabling. The channels are shallow pathways spaced for standards-compliant segregation, with 900 cross-overs to minimise interference. It's essentially an 'XY' grid throughout the floor where all cables can be run anywhere they're needed. The reduction in office height is negligible and unsightly service poles are done away with, so the office atmosphere remains open and uncluttered.

"It's glued directly to the slab, so it's very stable. The structural-grade flooring is solid under foot, with no possibility of lateral collapse. Partitions can be installed over the deck, which allows full cable access across the floor. Re-routing and re-cabling can be done by feeding beneath the floor for minimal disruption to work area during wiring changes.

"Its low height makes transition easy from an adjacent slab - a big advantage in retrofits where lift thresholds and stair treads are pre-set. With a reduced floor-to-floor height, it also has the potential to lower building costs and perhaps enable more floors to be designed within an approved building envelope."

Despite its advantages, it's a concept that suffers from relative obscurity in Australia. The problem is perception - while businesses constantly change their office layouts, the cost of future changes are often neglected by designers and contractors, with little thought given at the time of construction to operational costs borne by end users. If they were, end users could make significant savings over their tenure in an office.