The Royal College of Physicians of London (RCP) is the oldest medical college in England. It is the professional membership body for physicians, with over 32,000 members and fellows worldwide, and it plays a pivotal role in raising standards and shaping public health.
The RCP was struggling to manage an outdated wireless infrastructure that was constraining the functionality required by its events team. The site hosts a large number of conferences and educational events, and its vision was to be able to offer delegates enhanced Wi-Fi access and to encourage interaction with – and drive increased value from – its unique collection of museum artefacts.
Vohkus had been a longstanding technology partner of the RCP, and was asked to undertake an independent survey of the site and to make recommendations for the new system. Vohkus was subsequently invited to take part in a competitive submission for the project, and the RCP appointed it to design, manage and deploy Vohkus’ recommended solution. Discovery and solution selection The RCP’s campus in Regent’s Park, London, comprises a Grade 1 listed headquarters and a number of historic, solidly-constructed annexes. This restricts what can physically be done on the site, and access points needed to be sited to take account of how substantial the walls were in each of the buildings.
Situation
The Royal College of Physicians of London (RCP) is the oldest medical college in England. It is the professional membership body for physicians, with over 32,000 members and fellows worldwide, and it plays a pivotal role in raising standards and shaping public health. The RCP was struggling to manage an outdated wireless infrastructure that was constraining the functionality required by its events team. The site hosts a large number of conferences and educational events, and its vision was to be able to offer delegates enhanced Wi-Fi access and to encourage interaction with – and drive increased value from – its unique collection of museum artifacts.
Vohkus had been a longstanding technology partner of the RCP, and was asked to undertake an independent survey of the site and to make recommendations for the new system. Vohkus was subsequently invited to take part in a competitive submission for the project, and the RCP appointed it to design, manage and deploy Vohkus’ recommended solution.
Discovery and solution selection The RCP’s campus in Regent’s Park, London, comprises a Grade 1 listed headquarters and a number of historic, solidly-constructed annexes. This restricts what can physically be done on the site, and access points needed to be sited to take account of how substantial the walls were in each of the buildings.
An initial report suggested that 131 access points would be needed to meet the RCP’s initial specification. Working with the business to establish its primary aims, Vohkus was able to model its requirements and refine the design. This reduced the number of access points to a more manageable 71, several of which would require high-density configurations to cope with the multiple SSIDs (service set identifiers) needed when connecting several customers concurrently. As well as providing reliable, stable and fast wireless connectivity generally across the campus, the events team had a clear vision to add value for its customers. There are to 10 different events somewhere on the site every day; each would require wireless login using a branded splash page, so that delegates’ interests could be recorded and reported. For example, in the RCP’s museum there was an opportunity to provide an enhanced visitor experience using a dedicated app which would connect to Bluetooth beams adjacent to each exhibit. This would provide details and explain about how to buy related items from the RCP’s shop. Having evaluated various options, Vohkus recommended that a system from Aruba (a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company) would best meet this particular set of requirements. In particular, Aruba’s Meridian app platform would enable RCP to location-based services such as those it wanted to offer in the museum.
The RCP wanted on-site control of the network, having had previous poor experience with its existing cloudbased controller and outsourced supplier. The Aruba design offered either on-site or cloud control, so the system can be switched back to cloud at a later date if circumstances change. The RCP’s IT team also wanted to ensure the solution would support Skype and IP telephony in future. Vohkus ran a proof of concept with Aruba for RCP before the final purchasing decision was made. Both the RCP’s IT and the events teams were involved, as each had decided to contribute half of the project’s budget.
Implementation
In order to prevent disruption, Vohkus engineers pre-configured the Aruba switches and controllers before the system was deployed. “This project demonstrates the value that IT can bring working in partnership with the business, and the advantages of using a partner like Vohkus that can build a trusted relationship with both teams” - RCP IT Operations Manager When the time came for installation it was discovered that appropriate cabling was not already in place and connectivity on the old system could not be switched seamlessly by the incumbent third party supplier. Vohkus’ consultants put forward an alternative scenario, working with the RCP’s incumbent so the project could proceed. Vohkus provided several days’ training for both the IT team and the events team on how to use, manage and optimise the new system.
Conclusion
IT Operations Manager at the RCP, said: “This project demonstrates the value that IT can bring working in partnership with the business, and the advantages of using a partner like Vohkus that can build a trusted relationship with both teams. “Thanks to the combined efforts of ourselves, the events team and Vohkus, we now have greatly improved Wi-Fi across the site and can provide staff and delegates with the first class user experience they ought to expect of the RCP.”
