Nomenca, the specialist engineering contractor for UK utility companies, is rolling out a new, secure agile Wide Area Network (WAN) that delivers resilient on site connectivity to the company’s constantly changing pattern of UK contract locations.  

 

The fully managed WAN, which is being implemented by CI-Net, is allowing Nomenca’s specialist teams of electrical and mechanical engineers to collaborate at sites around the country using Microsoft Sharepoint and a variety of specialist systems including Autodesk Navisworks 3D design and Amtech electrical design software.

 

“Our biggest customers include the UK water utilities for whom we contract on projects such as equipping water treatment works and installing major pipeworks and filtration plants,” said Mark Thomas, IT manager at Nomenca, which is the Mechanical, Electrical, Instrumentation, Control and Automation (MEICA) arm of North Midland Construction Group.

 

“We’re often brought in alongside construction and civil engineering teams and other contractors and we rely on good on site connectivity to enable drawings and project information to be shared between our teams and with other contractors working on site.” 

 

The company’s projects can last anything from a month to two years so it is essential for the WAN to have the flexibility to easily support new locations and to scale bandwidth up or down as network traffic flows increase or decrease at specific sites.

 

CI-Net’s flexible network architecture currently covers ten locations including multiple load balanced links at Nomenca’s key offices in Warrington, Mansfield and Bristol.

 

These sites act as network hubs for smaller sites within each region and are connected in a mesh which permits alternative routes for accessing key data and applications if one of the prime sites goes down.

 

The network, which is based on open IP services, using CI-Net supplied circuits and a private addressing scheme, is delivering the flexibility that Nomenca demands as Thomas explained:

 

“CI-Net is able be add new lines in as little as one week if we need to connect a new location or add more bandwidth to an existing site.”

 

Additional flexibility is provided by using 3G routers to provide immediate on-site connectivity for short term projects or at remote locations. The routers connect to the WAN over the 3G mobile networks via one of CI-Net’s London data centre locations. 

 

“We’re also getting the bandwidth, built in resilience and business continuity we need because the network incorporates StoneGate firewall appliances at major locations. These do the job of load balancing traffic on the multiple links and also failover to maintain connectivity if one of the links has a problem,” said Thomas.

 

Nomenca originally considered implementing an MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching) network but found it inflexible as Thomas described:

 

“We decided that MPLS would be too rigid for our needs. We would have had to agree the scope of the network in advance and stick with it. It would have been difficult to add new locations as we’re now able to do. And we weren’t comfortable with the fact that there is no encryption on MPLS networks.”

 

All traffic is encrypted on the CI-Net network and access to the Internet is only via the CI-Net data centre which is set up to perform content filtering to protect against viruses, malicious attacks and spam. CI-Net provides round-the-clock network monitoring to pinpoint and address bottlenecks and trouble spots.   

 

“When we did the all the sums, we found that having CI-Net doing the network implementation and management was more cost effective than doing it ourselves. In cost terms it was a ‘no brainer’” said Thomas.