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The Dean and Chapter of York and York Minster

ICCOM are proud to have worked with the Dean and Chapter of York for many years and we were delighted to be considered for the roll of ICT consultants as part of a multi million pound project of renovation and refurbishment. This work encompasses the new York Minster Revealed project – which is still unfolding and is a very exciting opportunity to bring the Minster and all its activities, history and resources more fully to the public’s availability – in part through the use of the most up to the minute technologies.

The Dean and Chapter have a vision to make York Minster one of the most innovative and interactive visitor attractions in the country. However, providing the necessary infrastructure to turn this into a reality, in a building of such historical importance as York Minster, presents a unique challenge – and one we relished.

Having been successful in the tendering process our brief was far reaching. Essentially it was to future proof the Dean and Chapter of York’s entire telecommunications and IT infrastructure, spanning 30 sites and incorporating The Minster, for decades to come.

After extensive consultation and together with our key partners, we began by installing a state of the art, fully managed, core fibre network. This was a singlemode, 10 gigabit fibre network backed by a 25 year Krone warranty. Onto this we placed a series of high performance Netgear switches and re-cabled most of the sites with Cat6 cabling, to deliver truly outstanding network speeds and performance.

At the heart of the network we installed a new Siemens VoIP enabled telephone system which we fully integrated with the new IT infrastructure. This provided the Dean and Chapter with all of the functionality they could wish for and enabled them to start looking at new and innovative ways to improve their interface with the public.

In parallel with this and with another of our key partners we began the roll out of a complete IT service contract, including an ongoing program to refresh and renew all the IT hardware and to provide full desktop support.

As independent consultants, ICCOM were able to advise the Dean and Chapter on all of the emerging technologies available to them. We arranged demonstrations of numerous applications and hardware and put together proposals for a wide range of services including non geographic numbers, CCTV, door entry systems, disaster recovery and much more.

The project continues with the Dean and Chapter and we remain proud to be so intrinsically involved with their development. ICCOM will always work hard to ensure that whatever the future brings in the fast changing technology market the Dean and Chapter will have a network and a strategy capable of taking full advantage of it.