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BARE-BONES - MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS - DOCUMENTS


The FIA "Barebones Requirements" documents have been created to allow customers to identify the minimum requirements (expectations) which they should seek and should ensure are met before placing a contract for a specific service in relation to the installation, commissioning or fault-finding of optical fibre cabling. These contracts are commonly placed outside a major installation project and are typically applied to partial processes such as termination, testing etc.

These "Barebones Requirements" documents pose some basic questions that should be asked by the client and the supplier alike when undertaking any work. They are NOT a substitute for a properly specified, quality assured and risk-averse solution as recommended by the FIA and implemented by installers under the Approved Installer Scheme.

Instead, the following documents have been produced to provide a safety net in cases where such contracts are not approached using the recognised standards (for example BS 6701, BS EN 50174 series etc.) and which, as a result, are at greatest contractual and/or technical risk.

Reference
Title
Status
 Schedule  
BB001 Cable laying
Proper installation practices are required to ensure the performance of any cable over its lifetime. In addition, cable laying can be dangerous so correct practices are essential to minimise any risks. The client and supplier must work together on the specification and the supplier must be competent and able to undertake the work so that the final installation is fit for purpose.
02/2012
  
BB002 Termination
Termination is the process of attaching a fibre optic connector to an optical fibre. This document addresses the termination of installed optical fibre cables containing multiple primary coated optical fibres, secondary coated optical fibres or single ruggedized cable sub-units.
NOTE: The termination of cables to produce cords is normally a factory-based process and is outside the scope of this document.
Two basic solutions exist: the jointing, or splicing, of an optical fibre pigtail to the optical fibre (addressed in FIA-BB003) or the application of a connector directly to the optical fibre (addressed below). Direct termination may either adopt a “glue and polish” or a “pre-polished stub” approach. The contents of this document are intended to show favour to any specific approach.
10/2011
  
BB003

Jointing/splicing
Jointing or splicing together two optical fibres in a permanent or semi-permanent manner (as opposed to the use of mateable/de-mateable connecting hardware) can be effected in two ways - the use of mechanical splices involving various crimp techniques to hold the optical fibres within a “tube” or by the use of fusion techniques which “weld” the two optical fibres before protecting them in some form of sleeve. This document only addresses the “fusion splice” approach.
The splicing process considered in this document may either be applied to connect the optical fibres at the junction of two (or more) cables or to terminate an optical fibre with a short optical fibre pigtail.

02/2011
  
BB004 Inspection
TBA
  
BB005 Testing
Basic testing of installed optical fibre cabling covers a wide range of aspects: from continuity and polarity maintenance, via overall insertion loss/attenuation through to full cabling characterisation. Therefore, testing can involve equipment as simple as a conventional torch or as complex as a optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) costing thousands of pounds. It is therefore critical that the customer defines the type of testing required - and once defined, that the supplier is competent and able to undertake the work.
02/2011
  
BB099 Definitions, abbreviations and references
12/2010