Many experts in the underground industry say another fiber boom has arrived.
A recent horizontal directional drilling (HDD) job by K&W Underground Inc. shows one sector from which that demand is coming — education.
Gone are the days when there was one desktop computer for a classroom to share and the teacher wheeled in a TV to show a video.
Now, there are schools where every student receives a tablet computer. Through online learning, a student doesn’t even need to be in a physical classroom.
Technology in education takes many different forms, but the common denominator is that a robust fiberoptic network is necessary to support these advances.
That’s what the 2,000-student MidAmerica Nazarene University had in mind when it hired K&W Underground to design and install a new 25,500-foot (7,772.4 m) fiberoptic network on its campus in Olathe, Kansas. Its old infrastructure was dated and no longer able to meet the needs of its students, faculty and staff.
“The new network will provide the backbone for current and next-generation technologies used by educational communities to enhance our student’s education,” says Mark Leinwetter, the school’s information technology services manager.
Those technologies include smart classrooms; the use of video, smartphones and tablets; cloud services; big data; video conferencing; data warehousing; and more.
K&W Underground is riding this tech-inspired wave. The company, which like MidAmerica Nazarene University is based in Olathe, has been installing and maintaining utility systems for 40 years. They still do some water, sewer, gas and electric work, but since the first fiber boom hit at the start of the century, they’ve become more specialized.
“Over the last 15 years, we’ve gravitated primarily to fiberoptics and telecommunication work,” says Rex Schick, president of K&W Underground.
His company offers turnkey solutions and perform all aspects of a job. That means in addition to installing product, they design, test and maintain networks and do inside and outside plant construction.
K&W Underground consulted with MidAmerica Nazarene University to design the school’s network, with a focus on minimizing the amount of product installed and avoiding areas of campus identified for future growth.
This past summer a K&W Underground crew installed a 13,500-foot (4,114.8 m) fiberoptic ring to serve as the backbone of the network, plus 12,000 feet (3,657.6 m) of laterals to connect 23 buildings on campus. Cover was 36 to 48 inches (91.4 to 121.9 cm).
They installed two 2-inch (5.1 cm) HDPE SDR 13.5 conduits. One was spare to meet future needs.
“Nobody knows for sure what the next generation of technology will bring,” Schick says. “The school wanted to be able to have a network that they could expand in the future if necessary, so a spare conduit was included.”
The directional boring crew used a Vermeer D24x40 Series II Navigator® horizontal directional drill as the primary drill on the job because it had the power and force they needed to get through ground conditions that were about 65 percent rock, with the rest a clay-soil mix.
The campus is relatively compact at 100 acres (40.5 ha), and on a few bores where a smaller footprint was needed, a Vermeer D20x22 Series II Navigator® horizontal directional drill was used.
Schick says like any successful project, planning was a vital part of this job. Even though the work was timed to occur during summer break, there were some classes in session and students, faculty and staff on campus. Company and school officials met weekly to tweak the project plan to ensure disruptions were kept to a minimum.
“Planning, preparation and conversations with your customer about potential roadblocks is my tip of the day, I guess,” Schick says.
With that standard met, K&W Underground had another happy customer, and MidAmerica Nazarene University had a fiber network that will serve it well into the future.
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