DAS Head-end Board with Visual System Overview (VSO)

I recently went to a Neutral Host DAS head-end which we installed a few months ago. It took me a at least 10 minutes to figure out how all the head-end devices were connected. That was too long, considering the fact I engineered the head-end and did principal share of the commissioning and integration. If it took me 10 minutes, it will take others a lot longer.

In order to avoid similar situation in future, we updated the labeling (basically, added a lot more labels), and added a Visual System Overview on the wall. Lets call it VSO (since we are technical people, how can we not come up with another geeky term?!!)

VSO is not a substitute for Close-out package, it's a supplement.  Idea for the VSO is to make it easy and quick for visitors at head-end to figure out how everything is connected - essentially, take out the first hit of complication out of the way.

For VSO, we included the following:

1. Sector Map: this is a 4 sector site. This map shows which building is served by which sector.
2. A table of all the Remotes, their locations, and logical mapping (i.e., how they are connected to the head-end)
3. List of ROU locations and serial numbers
4. Logical Diagram of each sector produced by iBwave
5. Fiber panel mapping: show how the fiber is laid out.

We used Elmer's Tri-Fold board, few push pins, and 3M 2-sided tapes to keep the cost of the board less than $15 (all purchased at Wal Mart). We were fortunate to have some wall space to hang all of these documents - which I realize can be a luxury at a lot of locations. I guess we just have to be creative; on that note, I noticed that fiber channel covers in between the racks can be a good place for information.
If we see that this does add value, we will spend little more money on this in future, and probably have the drawings laminated.

Thanks to Eric Ko for being the creative director for this VSO.