John Lewis
Magna Park Distribution Warehouse, Milton Keynes
John Lewis Partnership is worth nearly £6 billion and includes leading UK retail companies Waitrose, John Lewis and Greenbee. Founded over 75 years ago by John Spedan Lewis, the Partnership now has 68,000 permanent staff, all of whom are partners in the business and share in the benefits and profits. The Partnership owns 26 John Lewis department stores, 187 Waitrose supermarkets, an online and catalogue business, John Lewis Direct, a direct services company, Greenbee, a production unit and a farm.
In September 2006 John Lewis Partnership started building its new distribution warehouse in Milton Keynes. The warehouse was designed to hold and supply goods for the John Lewis stores around the country, and the central location was an important factor when planning the build. At 365m by 160m this is one of the largest warehouses of its kind in the country, and is an integral part of the Partnership’s expansion plans. The sheer scale of the project determined that nothing but the best quality cabling could be used, therefore when Simons Construction and Hedley Solutions were contracted to start working on the warehouse, CommScope’s was the first number they called.
John Lewis Partnership has worked with CommScope for many years and specifies SYSTIMAX products for use in both the stores and distribution warehouses, because it knows that it will benefit from a premier system which will be capable of sustaining future growth. John Lewis went through CommScope’s Value Added Distributor Anixter to source the products needed for the project. As the world’s leading supplier of communications products, it could ensure that John Lewis would get the right products in the most efficient and cost-effective way using its innovative Supply Chain Services.
A design for the warehouse was provided by consulting services engineer company Kelly Taylor Associates and was based on CommScope’s SYSTIMAX Solution cabling system utilising Teraspeed® single mode fibre optic cable able to deliver 10 gigabit Ethernet, and GigaSPEED® CAT6 copper cabling able to deliver 1 gigabit Ethernet solutions.
Since the warehouse was designed to be semi-automated, it was crucial that the infrastructure could handle the high loads that would be required which is why the Teraspeed® single mode fibre optic cable was used. It was also essential for John Lewis Partnership that the infrastructure was future-proof so that there would not be the need for continuous upgrades.
One challenge the installation posed was that due to the size and design of the warehouse, all the fibre cabling needed to be run overhead and then down to floor level, and needed to be installed as the floor was being completed. The fact that the backbone cabling was entirely fibre with no copper meant that terminations were also more difficult than in many installations.
It was important for John Lewis Partnership that the two communication rooms that were designed, one at each end of the warehouse, could provide diverse backbone routes to the seventeen warehouse distribution wiring closets, to the gatehouse, to the main offices and to the despatch office. Within each communications room five Rittal 47U x 800mm cabinets and a SUM server bench and an IBM server cabinet were provided.
From each communications room a 12 core Teraspeed® optical cable was wired to each cabinet for a truly resilient network. SYSTIMAX LC connectors with their unmatched losses were terminated directly onto the ends of the fibre. A total of 17,000 metres of fibre cable was installed.
From each communication cabinet SYSTIMAX GigaSPEED® CAT6 horizontal cabling was provided to access points at high level and numerous outlets within the warehouse and offices. A total of 26,230 metres of cable was installed.
The whole project was working to incredibly tight deadlines and there were many different trades working together, often in close proximity and relying on each other to complete each step of the project on time. It was important to John Lewis Partnership that the entire build was completed within the time deadline specified, and Hedley Solutions has now begun work on the interior fit-out of the warehouse, which is due to be in use by next year.
Gordon Burkinshaw, of Hedley Solutions said: “The sheer scale of this project meant that every aspect of the build needed to go smoothly and perform without errors. With SYSTIMAX products from CommScope I knew that we would be getting the best products installed in the most efficient way and that the infrastructure would be the best John Lewis Partnerships could get.”