May-June-2022 - 21

INFRASTRUCTURE
of $35 billion per year, as reported by
the U.S. Travel Association.
The past several years have seen an
emphasis on airport improvements,
with projects at major hubs exceeding
$50 billion since 2018. Calls for more
than $20 billion have been included in
current federal infrastructure budgets to
improve the nation's airports.
Among the nation's thousands of
private and public airports, renovation
is inevitable, as they face fewer public
and zoning obstacles compared to new
construction projects. The challenge
for aging facilities is that working with
demolition and renovation projects can
prove difficult, especially in older terminals
where a consolidated set of as-builts
are not available.
One wrong cut of an existing communication
cable could prove costly,
affecting operational aspects
such
as security, flight information, and
baggage services.
Cable documentation is rarely at the
forefront of most project planning, yet
it often proves to be the most cumbersome
to design around. Liability often
makes contractors apprehensive about
cutting cables, while overtime for fixing
wrongly cut cables can prove expensive
for a continuously operating facility.
However, proper cable identification
can both avoid accidental downtime
that impacts customer experiences and
provide the project team the information
it needs to do its job unimpeded.
Understanding and planning for cable
infrastructure relocation costs before
contractors arrive helps build an accurate
budget from the start and mitigates any
surprises in the project schedule.
The State of Cable
Infrastructure
By code, most communication cables
must have markings. These markings
provide information such as manufacturer,
part number, date of manufacturing,
and distance markers.
The challenge is that older cables
may be lacking this information, either
because it was not provided when
installed or those markings were lost
through time. Markings also can be
damaged through installation, such as
pulling a cable through a pipe, creating
friction that rubs off the marking.
While analysts projected at the start of the
pandemic that such traffic would not come
back for a few years, early indications with
the rising rates of vaccinations are that
pent up demand may bring pre-pandemic
domestic travel levels back faster than
predicted.
COURTESY OF MICHAEL S. PAYNE
Unlike electrical cables that can be
easy to cut, diverted and rerouted, communication
cables require a knowledge
of what processes they are supporting
in order to plan for their cutting and
relocation. It is not always possible or
feasible to cut cables where they would
ideally be rerouted, especially if doing
so would necessitate a splice or multiple
splices. A splice is another point
of failure and it is not desirable. New
communication cables are typically run,
instead of cutting and splicing. Also, if
the cables are operational, the allowable
downtime could be just bare minutes, so
new cables will have to be run because
there would not be enough time to cut
and splice.
Communication cables also are made
of two different materials: copper and
fiber optic. With copper cables, processes
supported tend to be singular. Cutting
a copper cable might cause a monitor
to go down, but it will not take down
a whole system. Because copper cables
could potentially be spliced, they are
much easier to move.
Fiber cables reduce the number of
cables to manage, but they do that by
facilitating multiple systems on a single
cable. Cutting these cables potentially
can grind business to a halt as systems
go offline, whether they are phone lines,
fire alarm, public address systems, or
alarms monitoring security doors.
Methodical Task
Worth Investment
Understanding and planning for cable
infrastructure relocation before construction
begins not only builds proper
understanding of the scope of work, but
that knowledge translates to building a
proper budget. Most aviation projects
are design-build or CM at-risk that
requires contractor engagement early
in the project. Comprehensive cable
documentation enables contractors to
bid on the actual work not just time
and materials, and avoid any surprises.
The process begins by looking at
cable jacket colors and narrowing
down each cable's function. The date
of manufacture and cable footage
markers along with part numbers can
help identify end points and therefore
the cable purposes.
Following the cable to its termination
point and cross referencing the
cables there with the observations made
when visually examining the cables is
critical. Cables are marked at the conflict
points, and then the documentation
process moves to the end points.
Once cables are identified and
marked, critical processes can be protected
from accidental damage. Cables
that cannot be identified are left until
everything else has been documented
and determined, narrowing the
function by process of elimination.
Separating airline-specific cables from
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May-June-2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of May-June-2022
