Labour
Written on 2:55 PM by ooe
Labour costs, whether for direct employees or external contracts, form a significant part of the total deployment costs for any network. For FTTH a large amount of external network installation will be involved. The bulk of costs are attributable to this installation work, including duct build, cable installation and jointing/configuring cables. It is, however, important to consider the wider labour requirements associated with the whole lifetime of the FTTH network as shown in Figure 10.12. Not only does this add to the labour costs, it demonstrates the number of different functions required; these functions are usually carried out by different personnel.
| Pre-installation | Research/Feasibility studies |
| Legal/Regulatory issues | |
| Strategic planning | |
| Network surveys | |
| Removal of obsolete plant to free up duct space | |
| Product approval | |
| Product procurement | |
| Marketing/advertising | |
| Personnel training | |
| Installation | Detailed planning |
| Liaison with councils (notices etc) | |
| Customer order handling | |
| Personnel resourcing and scheduling | |
| Management and control of installers | |
| Installation of exchange plant | |
| Installation of external plant | |
| Installation of customer premise plant | |
| Premiums for out of hours work | |
| Post installation | Acceptance testing |
| Auditing | |
| Reinstatement of paving | |
| Maintenance | |
| Network upgrades/replacements |
Figure 10.12: FTTH network life cycle
Reduction of labour costs could be achieved by one or more of the following:
-
making the best use of the existing infrastructure (particularly duct network);
-
optimising network design;
-
more efficient practices;
-
more efficient processes;
-
better utilisation of personnel;
-
deskilling practices to enable lower paid personnel to be used.
If you enjoyed this post Subscribe to our feed
