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You Can't Manage What You Don't Know Exists: Why Hines Still Starts OT Remediation with a Physical Walkthrough
John Devaux has been at Hines for 27 years, working on the company's converged IT/OT program since the CIO put it on the agenda in the late 2010s. Roughly 96 Hines buildings are now working with Montgomery Technologies on managed OT services.
For Devaux and his network management support from Montgomery, modernizing these OT networks starts with something entirely non-technical: a physical walkthrough of the building.
The physical assessment consists of one or two network engineers on-site for a day or two, tracing Ethernet cables through crawl spaces and opening every telecom closet in the building. It is the step that makes everything else possible. Network scanning tools can identify devices on the network. Still, they can't tell you where those devices are physically located or whether the circuits feeding them are connected to anything.
The physical location of network equipment makes a big difference. "There are multiple networks. They're crisscrossed or flat in many cases. The where is critical: when you're designing something new and deciding where switches are going to go, you have to know where things are located," said Joe Gaspardone, COO of Montgomery Technologies.
These surveys often turn up surprising results. Hines has found buildings paying for auto-renewing circuits for decades with nothing on the other end — lines that kept renewing because no one knew it was safe to cut them. In one building, engineers traced an unidentified line through a wall, tore it open, and found the building's original time clock, sheet-rocked over but never disconnected. The phone line connected to it had been paid for for over 20 years.
The assessment also sets up the design. Once the as-built is in hand, the team can proceed directly to network design during the same visit. Across Hines's portfolio, the circuit consolidation that follows has typically reduced circuit count by around 40%, with ongoing project savings of $5,000 to $100,000 per building once new systems can connect directly to the managed network rather than ordering new circuits.
Upgrading and managing an OT network starts with crawling through telecom closets and knowing what's in the walls. Everything else follows from that.
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John Devaux has been at Hines for 27 years, working on the company's converged IT/OT program since the CIO put it on the agenda in the late 2010s. Roughly 96 Hines buildings are now working with Montgomery Technologies on managed OT services.
For Devaux and his network management support from Montgomery, modernizing these OT networks starts with something entirely non-technical: a physical walkthrough of the building.
The physical assessment consists of one or two network engineers on-site for a day or two, tracing Ethernet cables through crawl spaces and opening every telecom closet in the building. It is the step that makes everything else possible. Network scanning tools can identify devices on the network. Still, they can't tell you where those devices are physically located or whether the circuits feeding them are connected to anything.
The physical location of network equipment makes a big difference. "There are multiple networks. They're crisscrossed or flat in many cases. The where is critical: when you're designing something new and deciding where switches are going to go, you have to know where things are located," said Joe Gaspardone, COO of Montgomery Technologies.
These surveys often turn up surprising results. Hines has found buildings paying for auto-renewing circuits for decades with nothing on the other end — lines that kept renewing because no one knew it was safe to cut them. In one building, engineers traced an unidentified line through a wall, tore it open, and found the building's original time clock, sheet-rocked over but never disconnected. The phone line connected to it had been paid for for over 20 years.
The assessment also sets up the design. Once the as-built is in hand, the team can proceed directly to network design during the same visit. Across Hines's portfolio, the circuit consolidation that follows has typically reduced circuit count by around 40%, with ongoing project savings of $5,000 to $100,000 per building once new systems can connect directly to the managed network rather than ordering new circuits.
Upgrading and managing an OT network starts with crawling through telecom closets and knowing what's in the walls. Everything else follows from that.
Register for the next Nexus Labs event.
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This is a great piece!
I agree.