A cabling system is the only part of your IT estate you cannot upgrade over a weekend. Switches get swapped, access points get replaced, servers move to the cloud — but the cable in the ceiling stays where the contractor left it. That is why the decisions made in the first two weeks of a fit-out matter more than anything that happens later.
Start with the floor plan, not the product list
The most common mistake we see is a bill of materials arriving before anyone has counted the outlets. Vendors are happy to quote a rack and a box of cable; nobody can tell you how many links you need without a drawing. We start every project by walking the space with the architectural plan and marking three things: where people sit, where devices hang, and where cable can physically run.
- Desk positions and headcount per zone, including planned growth
- Ceiling devices: access points, cameras, speakers, sensors, door controllers
- Containment routes and any fire-rated walls the route has to cross
- Riser and data room locations, with realistic distances to the furthest outlet
That last point catches people out. Copper links are limited to 90 metres of permanent cable. On a large floor plate, a single data room in the wrong corner forces either a second rack or a fibre backbone — and it is much cheaper to discover that on a drawing than on site.
The three decisions that age
1. Cable category
Cat6 is adequate for a small office running gigabit to the desk. Cat6A is the right default for anything you expect to still be in service in a decade, and it is effectively mandatory if the same cabling will power Wi-Fi 6E/7 access points or PoE++ devices. The cable itself is a modest part of the project cost; the labour to pull it is not. Pulling it twice is the expensive outcome.
2. Backbone medium
Multi-mode fibre between floors and buildings is the standard choice, and OM4 gives you headroom for 40G and 100G links without re-pulling. Where the run is long, or where the client owns the building and expects to expand, single-mode is worth the incremental cost.
3. Outlet density
Under-provisioning outlets is a false economy. Adding a single outlet after handover means a technician, containment access, a certification test and a facilities request. Adding it during the first pull costs a few metres of cable. We size for the desks that exist plus a realistic allowance for the ones that will.
The cheapest cable you will ever install is the one you pull while the ceiling is already open.
Certify everything, and keep the results
Every permanent link should be tested to the relevant TIA/EIA or ISO/IEC standard and the results handed over as part of the documentation pack. Certification is not paperwork for its own sake: it is the difference between diagnosing an intermittent fault in an hour and chasing it for a week. It is also what a landlord or auditor will ask for.
Label as if you will not be the one fixing it
Consistent labelling at both ends, a patch schedule that matches the physical rack, and a floor plan with outlet numbers on it. Six months later, when someone else is troubleshooting at 2am, this is what separates a five-minute fix from an outage.
A short pre-flight checklist
- Do you have a marked-up floor plan with every outlet and ceiling device?
- Is the furthest link under 90 metres of permanent cable?
- Has the cable category been chosen for the devices you will have in five years, not two?
- Is there rack space and power headroom for the next expansion?
- Is certification and as-built documentation written into the scope?
If you can answer all five before anyone orders material, the project will almost certainly land on time. If you cannot, that is where to spend the next week.
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