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30 March 2008
Posted in
MyBlog
You may have heard about the new Lotto ticket checkers that are going in around the country that allow customers to check their own tickets. Well I'm involved in the project so if you're in the greater Wellington area and you see a short red head guy with a big sod off drill drilling holes in the counter then that's me. If it's a middle age guy with grey hair then that isn't me.
Anyhow, one thing I've noticed during this project as well as the numerous office moves I've had to do in my career is that people are pathetic when it comes to future proofing, in fact I seriously believe future proofing never enters their heads when they build something. What it means is that I have to endure architectural idiocy on a daily basis.
I hate architects because they design for the sake of design as opposed to practicality but there are things they could do that would bring them into my good books. Take for example the mess I have to endure with the Lotto project.
I have to drill through desks to run the cables for the ticket checker to the main Lotto terminal. In some cases this isn't so bad because it's simply a matter of drilling through the Lotto cabinets to the desk. The big problem are the cabinets that were there before the Lotto counters went in.
The biggest problems I've found are the bookstores. At one site there seemed no conceivable way to run the cables where we needed to in order to place it where they wanted it. After about 1/2hr trying to work out how to run the cables I noticed that there was actually a cut out for existing cables hidden behind the partition that allowed us to drill a hole above the run and thread a draw wire through thus pulling the checker cables through as well. But that wasn't easy either and thus we spent around 2hrs onsite. One site looked simple but ended up being a pain. Another site looked difficult but ended up being the quickest of the lot so far.
But one of our other customers (Post Shops) are another example of design for the sake of design. Most of the older desks are easy to access because they're mostly just holes in existing counters but the newer desks like at the Panama St Post Shop in Wellington are a bit retarded. Built after the Lambton Quay site it looks similar to the Lambton Quay site and you think this is going to be nice and easy (the Lambton Quay site has panels that can be removed from the front of the desk and everything is accessible from the back) but when you remove the panel from the front of the desk (customer side) you see some idiot decided to put a board in the way of the machine so you have to thread things through a tiny gap. Luckily for me I'm not very big so my arms can fit in but that's only just.
You'd expect in this technological age that architects would realise things will go wrong and that people may just need to access cables or run new ones. But no "This will never happen, there will always be enough for the future". EEEEEH. You couldn't be more wrong on the wrongest day of the wrongest week of the wrongest month of the Chinese year of Wrong Wrong. There will always be need for adding power points and network ports because someone will always want to add another till or terminal or PC or whatever.
Cable runs are essential to allow future proofing and they are simple but need to be built properly. In fact cable runs could also provide a degree of structural integrity as well thus becoming part of the desk rather than just an add-on. For example here's a couple I quickly sketched:
The top one pretty much shows what I mean by structural aides. When the counter top goes on there will be 6 points where the counter top would rest on. There would also not be a need for a brace beam as the load would be shared over those 6 points.
The second drawing was a quick one that showed a cable run pushing through the length of the cabinet. This run could also be run at the bottom of the cabinet as a channel. The problem with running the cable at the bottom is generally you'd have shelves over it and so you'd have to be pretty accurate with your drilling to reach the runs. The advantage of course is you'd have it all hidden away.
But what tends to happen is that cable runs are an afterthought and generally turn out to be nothing but a hole drilled into the side of the desk with no thought as to how to run the cables. Some desks I encounter with this Lotto project are corner desks with no way to access through it. I've had a couple of desks like this and I've had to run the cable under the lip of the desk to hide it out of the way. I've done it in such a way that you'd never know there was cable there except one site I did on Friday where I ran in underneath the drawer as that was the only place I could due to the fact I didn't have enough room to run the hole saw.
But desks aren't the only thing that makes future proofing difficult. Walls should have conduits every second stud like so:
It might seem like an added expense but have you ever tried running new points to a wall that has already been covered over? It usually ends with the wall being ripped open. Some have said you drop draw wires but why would you have to when simple conduit would allow you to do that so much easier? With conduit it would be a simple drop through the wall. Having this every second stud all around the room would make it so easy to add new power points or network ports without messy external conduit or destroying the wall to run the cables. You've saved yourself half the job by doing it before hand. An extra cost now would actually save you money in the long run if you have to redo the walls because someone bashed a hole through it. It also looks tidier and is more OSH ready than numerous multiboxes around the floor.
If you're building a house or a counter just please, for the love of God, think about future uses and make it easier for us who are forced to add new equipment at a later date.
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