University of Michigan - Wireless Design Surveys

Project Scope

In April 2015, The University of Michigan agreed to a capital investment of $24.4M for the Campus-wide WiFi Upgrade Project. This project provided WiFi upgrades for 275 academic, research, administrative, and residence hall buildings on the Ann Arbor campus. The buildings equaled approximately 15.9 million square feet and the project would take three years to complete.

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Project Results

The University of Michigan Wi-Fi Network Upgrade Project’s goal was to establish pervasive connectivity in academic administrative, and residence hall buildings on the Ann arbor campus. WZC completed and delivered over 275 RF active survey (pre-site survey) designs and documentation that were detailed and customized based on customer requirements for internal installation and deployment.

During an active survey (AP on a stick survey), a technician walks the entire building using AP on a stick connected to an Ekahau Sidekick. The APbroadcasts live on-site and can be frozen at multiple locations. This ismost often used to create a new network design from scratch in locations whereon existing infrastructure is in place, or if brand-new infrastructure needs tobe designed for. WZC technicians walked the entirety of the campus buildings to create the survey data.

WZC attended onsite weekly meetings with the UM project managers, cable team, and other IT staff at UM to ensure the whole team shared information about the project. The three project managers divided the campus up into groups of 100. WZC dedicated two technicians to the project full time to ensure the success of the schedule and hired a dedicated technical writer to complete the docs. Documentation was uploaded to UM’s Dropbox for easy access. This project spanned over three years and had a total budget of $24.4M.

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Customer Bio

The University was founded in Detroit in 1817 and its first commencement was held in 1845 to recognize the graduation of 11 men. Women were first admitted in 1870. The University has grown to include 19 schools and colleges, covering the liberal arts and sciences as well as most professions. The fall 2015 enrollment of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students was 43,651. The staff count was 14,339. The U-M provides campus housing to 9,500 undergraduate students in18 residence halls and apartment. The FY2015 operating revenues from state appropriation, tuition, research grants and contracts, gifts, and health revenues was nearly $6.86 billion.