B4RN

These are most of the B4RN people you are likely to come across.

The Civils Team of 4 and the Splicing Team of 8, with Bruce liable to turn up in either team. Although there are some specialists there, some are multi-taskers.

James and Sam can do splicing. Paul also moves around.

The Civils Team tend to the Core Blowing, The Splicing Team do the bullets and cabinet. There is a lot of overlap with the house fibre and house splicing, most of the 2 teams can do that. Bruce tends to be in charge if he is around. Nick would be in charge if he was there, otherwise no hierarchy is evident. Some of the splicers work on their own somewhat and are less extrovert than the Civils Team.

They will all help try to help you. Nick would be your best person for practical advice. Nick, Bruce, Paul and Alistair have been heavily involved as B4RN volunteers before they became employees. Most of these people have been with B4RN less than 3 years. (Some villages have been going for longer than that. When Ingleton began, B4RN had 8 staff)

None of these are easy to contact. Elaine might be the person to try first, she has one of the higher response rates. You won't be able to contact the 3 in the Civils Team or the 8 Splicers at all.

In the office Ed is a genius with the maps and spreadsheets. Amy and Jen are your first port of call if you have a question and don't quite know who to ask, they keep the place ticking. All 3 of these will readily respond to communication.

And there are more

These don't get out and about much, but they certainly need to be mentioned

Martin is the new helpdesk and customer support person, he's a past volunteer and so he knows the ropes. He also still works as a volunteer in his spare time.

We have Andrew and Kristina the top Accounts people (nobody warms to Accounts people but they're okay apparently) and Catherine and Ashley also work with them in the paper industry.

Jane is fairly new, somewhere in the mapping/wayleaves section.

Martin at weekends

Kristina

Beyond the B4RN employees there are one or two volunteers that you may come across. Value them.

How to get the best out of B4RN?

You may have some frustrations with them at times and find communication difficult. They are still only a small group of people and not from managerial backgrounds.

You need to show some efficiency in the way you deal with B4RN with ordering, work claims, etc.
You may have to think up your own systems rather than thinking you will simply comply with existing B4RN systems.
Consider having 1 or 2 people who do most of the dealings with B4RN rather than sending a different person to Melling every time.
Send your best people-person, who can make friends, they're a great set of people, it's not difficult.
B4RN need to know who to ring as your primary contacts.
Keep all e-mails as short as possible. You get a better result. (It’s a waste of ink to send Nick more than 30 words)
Beware of 'reply all'. Do not copy B4RN into some rambling chat e-mails that are internal to your own group of volunteers. Look at the list of recipients to group e-mails before you send - does X need to know this?

Getting work authorised

You need to have a structured plan with focus on getting sectors live one at a time, rather than laying duct in places that cannot come live for many months.

B4RN may in fact not give the go-ahead for you to move on to various parts of your network. This is where it would be useful for them to build up confidence in you, because if you came up with a good case for anything they would listen. For example, if you had a section where whoever was doing the work is happy to wait for payment, then it would be difficult for B4RN to refuse.

Getting road crossings done could slow you down, especially if you have some expensive road-cuts, for example. It might even be worth changing your network design so that whole sectors can be completed without expensive crossings.

But you could still crack on with the rest of that sector, if you got to the stage where the last thing you needed to get 20 houses live was a road crossing, then it will get done. And nothing stops you doing work with volunteers anywhere in your patch. You could always get house-owners digging across their gardens before you got there, even get their house kit installed. Then if you can tell B4RN you have x houses champing at the bit, they will listen to your plan more closely.

It might seem strange to be slowed down by B4RN, if your community has raised the total amount of share capital to build the whole network. But the shares are only really a 3-year loan. It wouldn’t really work if it took 3 years to build the network without any income. There is still a cashflow needed.

Whilst you may sometimes be waiting for B4RN to get you some splicing time or something, do not get clever and say you are ready for a certain stage when you are not. It ruins trust if they turn up and you are not ready.

You often do not get much notice as to when they will arrive. It can be a phone-call the night before. Or with a job like bullet work at chambers they can come and do it without you knowing they were in town. Even blowing core fibre. And you may not be informed even after. You will need a village grapevine to tell you if anyone sees a B4RN car around.

Use others

One of your best sources of advice will be from the contractors you deal with, they know more about the construction side than almost anyone at B4RN. They will also give you their own insight into how to work with B4RN.
You should already have a good relationship with your neighbouring B4RN groups. Some of them will have been working with B4RN for a year or more and should be able to advise.
Some volunteers and villages are kitted up with the full equipment to do splicing and blowing house fibre. They are volunteers and somewhat free agents. Silverdale B4YS and B4SW for example do all their own blowing and splicing. I have never asked them, but I bet they would happily come and do a few houses for you if you were stuck.
Other villages know stuff, ask the B4RN people to suggest useful people to talk to.
You have a large degree of autonomy in what you do. B4RN are never going to be breathing down your neck.
Things will improve as you learn and B4RN gain trust in you.

This is the installation on the wall at B4RN in Melling, showing the Blue Peter version of what they are about.

Physical Infrastructure Access (PIA)

From this year Ofcom has compelled Openreach to open up their poles and underground ducts to other users. This means that seemingly insurmountable obstacles to the progress of some B4RN areas may now be overcome. PIA means you have to go through a fair bit of paperwork, have to comply with some serious health and safety stuff and you have to pay rent. But it does mean some areas are now reachable.

We are talking about the underground ducts rather the poles for B4RN’s use. There has to be spare capacity. You are allowed up to 25mm of tubing - since you can supply anything down a 16mm that’s not a problem. You can put joins in their chambers. All work has to comply with their standards. How you actually break into their system is not clear. The rent you pay is fairly low.

(“PIA is also only available for infrastructure which has been fully completed and not during construction” - that bit sounds impossible to comply with)

There is a fair bit of paperwork from B4RN’s point of view, this could tie up a member of staff for some time. Also the actual civils work will be have to done by B4RN, plus a few training courses, a few hard hats and traffic barriers, etc.

"A very long day at B4RN HQ in Melling yesterday may have solved many of our major road and river Kent crossings."

To B4RN Levens this has been good news.

"Having submitted our plans to B4RN HQ back in April 2018 we were not to know this coincided with the Ofcom instruction for BT to open its ducts and chambers to other Internet providers.

Your Levens B4RN Project Team have now spent a full day per week over the last 3 weeks assisting the B4RN staff with our local knowledge to identify, check capacity and list both ducts and chambers required to assist our scheme throughout sections of our village and beyond.

Original plans included drilling under the A6, the river Kent, A6 again and section of the A590 at an estimated cost of well over £30,000. We can now expect a pennies per metre rent to pay for sharing BT infrastructure.

These identified parts of infrastructure have been placed on an electronic order to form a crucial stage of our network. A green light to go ahead expected in a week. Further sections of our village have been identified as ''Having spare capacity'' to be collated into further orders.

Each will save time and considerable cost in routing our fibre optic conduits around the village"

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