St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council
St Helens Metropolitan Borough Council uses Logicalis MAN to get community online
The Client
Built out of an industrial heritage of glass, chemicals and coal, St. Helens has rapidly moved away from its 'workshop of the world' image to that of a centre for European and World business innovation. Today St. Helens is a modern, distinctive, economically prosperous and vibrant Borough.
With a mission statement enshrining its commitment to "ensuring that quality services are developed and delivered for the benefit of the Community", St. Helens Council is responsible for the delivery of all public services to the local community.
The Council has readily embraced the Government's Local Government Modernisation Programme, and recognised that Implementing Electronic Government is integral to achieving its mission of delivering quality services to users and making them more readily 'accessible to all'. In its "Implementing Electronic Government Statement" the Council has set out the vision of ensuring that that by 2005, public services in St. Helens will be accessible by anyone, by any method, from anywhere, at anytime.
The project was to be delivered across two phases, with the first phase, encompassing the implementation of the core of the ICT network infrastructure across 80 sites, required to be in place within eight weeks - a deadline that was non-movable.
The Solution
In November 2001, Logicalis Limited was awarded the prime contract for the design, implementation and on-going management of a high speed wide area network for St Helens MBC. The project included a raft of professional services including cabling, design, implementation and project management, and a contract for on-going managed services delivered from Logicalis' Network Operations Centre in Ascot.
Logicalis installed an all-encompassing Ethernet network providing access between sites at speeds of 1000Mbps, 100Mbps and 10Mbps all based on Extreme Networks' range of high speed switches. For the CCTV requirement Logicalis proposed an overlay infrastructure that would allow the Council to take advantage of modern ‘IP' based surveillance systems that bring huge benefits in security and monitoring. Connectivity is provided by fibre to the camera, with image data collected at aggregation points and sent onward via wireless communications to the core network.
The Bottom Line
Despite the tight timescales, the initial project was completed on time and to budget, which is a testament to Logicalis's project management expertise.
"Logicalis did an outstanding job in delivering the core infrastructure within the tight timescales stipulated," said Jonathan Greenhough, IT Strategy Manager of St Helens Borough Council.
The first phase provided access to approximately 40 Council locations, 19 community and library locations, 16 school locations, the Chamber, and a number of locations through the Healthy Living initiative, Health Action Zone and a number of CCTV camera locations. The new MAN forms the foundation for future initiatives and a central plank in the council's e-government initiatives.