What is Riser Management
Riser management involves actively maintaining, securing, and documenting the cabling, equipment, and services within the telecommunications riser systems and common areas of commercial buildings.
The vertical pathway in which cabling for telecommunications and data travel from the minimum point of entry (MPOE) up to each floor of a commercial building is called the riser system.
Riser management is the active management of the riser system and includes responsibility for all telecommunications closets, wiring, and routing equipment that runs from the riser closets, through common areas and conduits, to the tenant spaces.
Tenants in commercial office buildings rely on readily available and actively maintained building connectivity to run their enterprise solutions.
Often, technology responsible property management and building ownership will engage riser management companies to oversee service installations, routine maintenance, infrastructure survey and documentation, and service recovery to ensure their building’s technology profile is best-in-class and that they are meeting the connectivity demands of new, high-profile tenants.
Benefits of Riser Management for Property Managers
As a property manager, you’re probably familiar with last-minute access requests to your telecommunications spaces when your tenants contract with various technicians to deliver new services. Unfortunately, these technicians often have no experience working on your building’s critical infrastructure and are unfamiliar with your operational and security procedures.
Property managers of commercial buildings should have standardized procedures for their engineering staff and visiting technicians. Ensuring the security of the riser system and documenting any changes to the services within the building are critical to the integrity of the infrastructure and your tenant’s operations.
Each time a tenant generates a service request, someone from your team needs to chaperone the visiting technician, grant them access to the necessary spaces, ensure the job was completed to spec, and document any Moves, Adds, and Changes (MACs).
These processes demand a great deal of time for each request, from each tenant. Adhering to riser management processes offers many benefits for property managers and their staffs:
- Provides a centralized, single point for accountability, security, and reliability for telecommunications and data infrastructure, service, and recovery
- Implements standards and controls, ensuring the building meets all national and local safety requirements
- Secures telecommunications spaces and offers protection from data theft, sabotage, and fire hazards
- Significantly reduces contractor service time and tenants costs for infrastructure service calls
One of the most important benefits to active riser management is that actively-maintained infrastructure documentation provides crucial information for the property owners and tenants.
To maximize efficiency during the planning and deployment phases of strategic technology upgrades and minimize downtime during network outages, complete and accurate documentation of the building’s connectivity infrastructure is extremely important.
Active riser management and dynamically maintained documentation of a building’s technology infrastructure profile maximizes operational efficiencies, reduces the need for costly connectivity audits, and provides property management and building ownership with valuable data to help market their building to brokers and prospective tenants.
Benefits of Riser Management for Tenants
Recent studies indicate that buildings with reliable and advanced connectivity are commanding higher rent than comparable buildings with less advanced technology profiles. This is largely due to the fact that in today’s market, tenants are looking for new suites and spaces that can meet the technological demands of their IP-based office equipment while also guaranteeing uninterrupted access to the cloud.
Buildings with riser management in place provide tenants with the peace of mind of knowing that their building’s connectivity is a top priority. The benefits of riser management for the tenant include:
- A single point of contact for their access and service requests, greatly reducing installation times, procedural confusion, and frustrations associated with service and technology upgrades
- Secured and monitored telecommunications closets and spaces, protecting their connection to the cloud and operability of their suite’s equipment
- Single point of contact and expediated response times for disaster recovery
- Access to actively maintained building infrastructure documentation to plan future enterprise solutions
- Complimentary consultation services to take advantage of additional technologies available through existing infrastructure
Riser management processes provide a myriad of benefits both for your staff and your tenants. Riser management services may be available at minimal investment, but the ROI is tangible and immediate. Along with offering infrastructure security and convenience for tenants, property managers and owners can be assured that they are “future-proofing” their buildings, keeping the building ready to adopt the newest technology and communications infrastructure.
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