Based on a growing reputation for fast, professional deployment capabilities, Cable and Wireless Worldwide, working with Atkins have selected Flomatik to provide a team of fibre planners based in multiple regions throughout the UK. Our national team will provide support for C&WWs wide-scale network integration, to provide 4G IP backhaul for their new mobile parent, Vodafone. Further opportunities within this very significant programme of works are being pursued.

Virgin Media has again selected Flomatik to provide specialist design services on a major network build project. Between March and September 2013, Virgin is implementing significant new fibre provision to connect client sites, to provide their customer with a bespoke network.

Flomatik has been appointed as Virgin’s design partner for this work, undertaking both Optical and Transmission design for 250 network spans.

We’re delighted to announce the results of our customer satisfaction surveys conducted in Q4 last year; these demonstrated that Flomatik has continued to offer our customers a service that helps them make a difference to their business.

Overall the results were consistent across the 14 questions on the survey, some examples results are:

Technical & Engineering

95% of our clients state that our staff demonstrate an outstanding work ethic.

Project Management & Coordination

100% of our clients trust our project managers and coordination teams will take a creative approach to achieve a successful outcome

"Stewart Pert is my point of contact and continues to give excellent service.. This request was challenging and Stewart made sure the technical focus was there within Flomatik and also kept the customer up to date during our tri-party calls."

Overall Performance

When asked whether we live up to our values and aspirations to be Passionate, Expert and Innovative, 98% of respondents answered YES.

Naturally we are very pleased with these results, but we intend to aim for even better scores during 2013.

Following the successful Switch Over of the last UK TV region to Digital, Arqiva are continuing to improve the digital TV platform. Flomatik's engineers are currently undertaking a nationwide program of pressurisation tests on the antennae, and updating components to ensure the equipment now in use is functioning to it’s optimum capability.

Virgin Media's "Knowing our Network" workstreams aim to bring together more information about Virgin's network inventory, both Physical and Logical, than has ever before been collected, in a new, customised database.

VM recognises the importance of up-to-date and accurate data, and has already invested heavily in developing and bringing online their GComms and Cramer systems. As work steps up to populate this system, Virgin have turned to Flomatik to provide Project Management and OSS expertise, as well as experienced network planners and subject matter experts to assist with this programme and also to provide additional backfill into Business As Usual roles.

This is an ambitious plan which is scheduled to run well into 2013, and Flomatik's knowledge and understanding of Virgin's network, it's legacy and current systems are proving invaluable in supporting the KON programme team.

Flomatik have undertaken surveys and planning of four mesh areas for WiFi networks in the Leeds & Bradford area on behalf of Virgin Media. The city councils in this area are keen to roll out WiFi have selected Virgin as their partner to implement these networks.

Following on from our successful involvement in the delivery of the Core fibre upgrades for EE/MBNL, we are delighted to have been asked to provide designs for the Dark Fibre spans that Virgin Media are delivering for SSE (NEOS).

This is part of the roll out of new high-speed fibre for Janet6, the latest generation of the Janet network, which serves the UK's academic and educational community.

Since 2009, SCTE and Informa have held a joint golfing event, which attracts 64 players split into 16 teams. This year, the Flomatik team comprised Kevin Barrie, Ben Allwright, Matt Harrison and Jeff Giles, who arrived at the beautifully presented Hanbury Manor Golf Course looking to improve on last year's second place. The day turned out to be gloriously sunny, as one of the rare days this summer.

The conditions were ideal for posting a good score. So with no excuses the team hit glorious tee-shots on the tricky opening hole but this is when the plan started to unravel. Despite the best efforts, some unfortunate scoring slowed the team's progress. In the end, Team Flomatik battled to a creditable 3rd place but the coveted first place is still waiting to be grasped.

Fortunately, there is always next year!

About SCTE: The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) provides technical leadership for the telecommunications industry and serves its members through excellence in professional development, standards, certification, and information. Since its beginning in 1969, the Society has been dedicated to providing meaningful resources and programs for its members and the industry. For more information, visit http://www.scte.org/default.aspx.

On the 2nd July, Flomatik started the second stage of an engagement with VM's Core & Edge Data logical Deployment & Support (D&S) team. The 40-strong Logical D&S team carry out the logical configuration of the switches and routers that make up VM's Core Backbone, Metro, Edge and larger customer IP networks that are installed by the Physical D&S team, where Flomatik have 5 engineers (Baz Collings, Carl Knight, Craig Glover, Mark Womack, Pete Kenna) already providing great service to VM.

Stage 1 saw Flomatik carry out a 6 week consultancy-level review of the D&S team's processes, working practises, supporting systems; analysing the effectiveness and the overall efficiencies of the team, advising VM management of any areas of concern and proposing an action plan to improve the operation of the team. VM have subsequently taken up our proposal and we have embedded a 3-person PMO team into the D&S area under a 3 month Managed Service agreement, with a view to a longer-term collaborative relationship.

Stage 2 aims to realise a conjoined, effectively operating engineering function that can keep pace with, and exceed, VM’s ambitious network capacity growth plans, whilst looking to introduce efficiencies through process, system and resource optimisations.  The team will focus on three key areas below with the ultimate goal of saving VM money whilst increasing output of the D&S team:

1. Team management and work coordination - Flomatik will take responsibility for the PMO team and the workload management of the department, including Virgin’s contract and permanent engineering and coordination personnel.
2. Measurement and reporting - The PMO team will instigate and act upon Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to align performance with Virgin’s business goals and other, more tactical management initiatives.
3. Process and system development - The PMO will introduce Service Improvement Planning (SIP) to capture and progress any identified improvement opportunities.

To ensure we deliver on our commitment to VM and help grow the partnership further, Flomatik welcomes 3 new starters to this team in the shape of Paul Overbury who is heading up things as the Technical Delivery Manager, David Sutherland who takes on the Technical Analyst role and Nicola Cumberlege who assumes a Resource Manager role.  Each of the team have a vital and distinct role to play and come with a vast wealth of experience gained at Major Service Operators and vendors alike.

Flomatik's team working in Virgin Media's Core department have been a major part of the effort to roll-out new fibre rings for the Everything Everywhere - MBNL backhaul network upgrades. MBNL are a significant customer for Virgin Media, and have a challenging schedule to complete area node updates to support increasing traffic on their network.

As well as a talented design team, Flomatik has supported this project with experienced and skilled managment and coordination, working alongside Virgin's own access planning teams to ensure completion of 14 rings.  This total puts the project ahead of schedule.

Emtelle have been providing ducted network solutions for 20 years, and provide their customers with strong technological knowledge.  To complement their own expertise, the company has selected Flomatik as a planning partner, ensuring that they can provide the full spectrum of FttH services to their clients.

Some of Flomatik's team have spent time recently at Emtelle's production plant finding out more about their product range and trying their hand at duct configuring and blowing fibre; the above photograph shows James Parford and Laurie Veitch-Clark showing off their handiwork.

http://www.emtelle.com/

Flomatik is proud to announce that it has been awarded Gateway Accreditation by Arqiva this week. This accreditation enables Flomatik to directly request site access for Arqiva owned and managed sites, whether for survey purposes or electrical or mechanical work.

This is an important step in the process of taking on larger turnkey pieces of work for Arqiva, and means that Flomatik is now better able to manage these pieces of work independently.

The accreditation is only awarded after an audit of proceses, in particular Health and Safety, and the company is delighted to have been deemed to live up to Arqiva's high standards in this regard.

To support Flomatik's continued growth into new clients and segments, the company is excited to announce the addition of two new Lead Consultants:

Garry Kelly, formerly of VM and expert in OSS, Telephony and Data operations, has joined to augment the business's existing capability and to help successfully leverage the current expertise into new opportunities.

David Arnold, an ex-employee of Everything Everywhere (Orange), XO Comms, Wanadoo and Bulldog (C&W), brings deep domain expertise and delivery skills in Mobile, Wifi and Broadband Local Loop (inc. LLU).

These further investments recognise the success of the company in growing new areas of operation, based on the knowledge, reputation and track record of the company to date.

We welcome them into the fold, confident that their complimentary expertise will help to guide, inform and deliver gains in those areas where communications industry growth is most evident.

Virgin Media has again selected Flomatik to provide turnkey Optical Design, Transmission Design, Documenta Management and Project Coordination servics to support the realisation of the TTT mobile backhaul projects.

Complimenting an existing network engineering capability, Flomatik has been awarded a number of Data I&C activities at VM, including both BAU operations and turnkey SoWs. It is expected that this service area will find further growth and synergies by encompassing the fuller breadth of Flomatik's IP Planning (Physical and Logical), and Core Transmission expertise, to enable broader turnkey services across multiple technologies and network layers.