Rolling out IT infrastructure to one site is a project. Rolling it out to 225 sites is a programme, and the difference is not simply scale. The hard part is making site 180 look exactly like site 4, months apart, with the same labelling, the same test results and the same standard of workmanship.
The brief
Install a consistent IT infrastructure at every site in the estate, from the Midlands to the south coast, to one specification and to an agreed schedule. Each location had to be surveyed, installed, tested and documented the same way, and the client wanted one point of contact rather than a different regional installer at every stop.
Why consistency is the difficult bit
On a rollout of this size, the usual approach is to subcontract by region. It gets sites done quickly and it produces an estate where every location is slightly different. Labelling conventions drift. Test results arrive in different formats, or not at all. Two years later, nobody can tell from the records what is actually installed at a given site.
That matters most when something breaks. An engineer attending a fault at a site they have never visited either has accurate records or starts guessing. Guessing is expensive when it happens 225 times.
What we did
We planned the programme by region so that travel and resourcing made sense, then worked through the sites in a fixed pattern. Every location followed the same sequence: survey, install, test, document, hand over.
The work was carried out by our own directly employed engineers rather than agency labour. This is the decision that makes consistency possible. Our engineers already know the specification, the labelling convention and the standard we expect, so site 180 is installed by someone who installed sites 40 and 90.
Our engineers are DBS checked, and cleared for Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Justice work where that is required. On a rollout that crosses many different site types, vetting that is already in place stops access becoming the thing that holds up the schedule.
Testing and documentation
Every installed link was tested and the results recorded. Labelling followed the same convention at every site, matching the documentation so that a label on a patch panel means the same thing in Leicester as it does in Portsmouth.
Each site was handed over with its own pack: test results, as built records and labelling schedules. Taken together, these give the client a single accurate picture of what is installed across the whole estate rather than 225 separate stories.
The result
225 sites completed to one specification, with standardised labelling, full test results at every location and a single point of contact throughout the programme. The client ended up with an estate that can be supported, because the records describe what is actually there.
Planning a multi site rollout?
The questions worth asking any contractor are simple. Who is actually doing the work, and are they employed by you or booked in for the day? What vetting do your engineers already hold? What do I get at handover for each site, and will it be the same at all of them?
If the answers are vague on a pilot site, they will be worse on site 200. We work with our own engineers, to one specification, and we document every site the same way.
Draft: client name, programme dates and timescales to be confirmed before publication.