Lars Tjernagel is our new PPC-1 Tier-3 Transmission Engineer for PPC-1 (US) and  is responsible for operations and maintenance in Guam.  Lars will also help lead the installation and turn up of the PPC-1 system, as well as document operational processes and procedures for system wide use based on final equipment and station configurations.

Lars has 16 years of telecommunications industry experience in this position and has formerly worked for such companies as TATA Communications, VSNL International, Tyco Telecommunications, and AT&T Bell Labs in positions of system engineering & installation, system commissioning and network operations of Undersea Fibre Optic Systems.

With the Cable Landing Station (CLS) construction in the home stretch and the fibre optic backhauls in place, the Sydney infrastructure for PPC1 is progressing extremely well.

The Horizontal Directional Drilled (HDD) bore pipe and the land duct route installations need to be completed prior to the arrival of terminal equipment, land cables and the cableship.

Both are scheduled to break ground in the coming week.

The HDD bore will proceed 2.1 km from the middle of a local football pitch to its exit point some 800m offshore in 20 m water depth. With all permitting in place, agreement reached with the local football club and the intial geotech work completed, the equipment is now being mobilised to the HDD site.

To see how the HDD works, click here to see a previous PIPE blog. 

The beach manhole site fencing has been installed, as has a 300mm deep road base layer to cope with the equipment weight being brought to site. Already on-site are the excavator, generator, bare drill rig (see photo) and the mud pump / shaker system. The drill rig control shack, site amenities and demountable buildings, drill hydro pack and drill pipe will arrive on site over the coming week. Site set-up of rig anchoring, site power and plumbing will be installed concurrently.