Well done everyone! 

 

Open Reach will be proceeding with the delivery of our scheme and they’ve outlined the key stages below. Don’t worry if you don’t see or hear any activity for several weeks – a lot of the planning and surveying is done behind the scenes but please be reassured that it’s still coming!

 

You will receive regular updates every three months on the progress of the build. Once fibre is available to order Open Reach will email everyone with a voucher asking you to go ahead and place your order as soon as possible. You will be able to reply to these emails and liaise with their vouchers team on any questions around ordering.

 

Delivery falls into roughly 4 stages with many tasks in each stage, these are Survey, Plan, Build, Test and Commissioning.

 

Survey – This is where we upload the initial details onto our workforce systems, check capacity in our network and exchange and send out a survey officer to check the physical geography and plan lines up with what we have on our systems. At this stage we can also determine if any traffic management or road closure are required and if so we will need to line up local highways. Once the survey returns are back we move into planning.

 

Planning is where our engineers will provide a solution based on the survey to give the best speeds possible. They will also order kit and build the whole plan on our systems to create a pipeline of work for our workforce and produce the job packs.

 

Building of the Network   -we will begin work on the civil engineering works which could be anywhere on the network from your local area back to the exchange. The first job is to ‘prove’ any underground network i.e. check the underground ducting for blockages caused by wear and tear or blocked over time with mud and silt. Once we know the underground path is clear we can then begin to install the cable and blow through the fibre optic cable. Once this is complete we will test the fibre network from one end to another to check the community will get the required speeds. We call this ‘light’ testing. Once we get the correct measurements you’ll be glad to know we are almost there and can move onto the final stage of commissioning!

 

Commissioning is where we complete all final tests and physical audits to ensure everything is compliant. We also amend all our systems to reflect this new work and handover to the service providers so they can also update their systems. Once complete we are ready to go and orders can then be placed for fibre!