Designing AI-Ready Buildings With Fiber And Cat6A

We answer rapid-fire questions from the field on how structured cabling is changing as AI expectations, PoE power, and converged building systems reshape what “good design” means. We share practical guidance on Cat 6A decisions, fiber-first momentum, technician retention, and how to protect margins when budgets do not keep up with technology. 
• designing AI-ready buildings by leaning on standards, best practices, and flexible infrastructure 
• when Cat 6A is worth it for early adopters, Wi-Fi 7, and long-term life-cycle planning 
• retaining technicians through paid training, clear career paths, mentorship, recognition, and pay 
• why experienced techs fail credentialing tests, including moving standards and test-readiness habits 
• PoE installation pitfalls, including bundle heat, power budgets, and proper testing 
• handling cybersecurity responsibility as physical security systems merge onto the IT network 
• what AI data centers change for field contractors, including precision, power, heat, and cable management 
• habits that separate average installers, including curiosity, craftsmanship, and communication 
• protecting estimating margins with documentation, gap spotting, and change management 
Email Chuck at advertising at letstalkcabling.com and let's connect your brand to the right audience today. 
Make sure you send your questions now. 

Transcript

Live Welcome And Weekly Rituals

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Wednesday night 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. You know that can only mean one thing. Live after hours with your favorite RCDD. You know that's me. Your favorite RCDD, Chuck Bowser.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

Let's talk. Yeah, let's talk. Stay connected. Stay connected. Do it right.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

You know I do this every Wednesday night on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube. Everywhere I can figure out how to send the signal where you get to ask your favorite RCDD questions on installation design, certification, credentialing for structured cabling, projects, Cat5E, Cat 6, Cat 6A, multi-mode fiber, single mode fiber, project management, design, estimation. We cover all that fun stuff. So for people with the low voltage or limited energy industry. Yes. So we always start up every week with what are you drinking? What are you drinking? Chuck is drinking Earl Grey Tea in a knowledge's power cup. Yes. Earl gray tea with with uh honey, a little bit of creamer, and a throat lozenge. Because I tend to project my voice a lot doing these things. So that's why I do that. That's

Acronym Challenge With OLT

SPEAKER_00 1:50

why I do that. Acronym challenge. You know, we also do an acronym challenge every week. OLT. OLT, what does that stand for? I'll give you a hint. Has something to do with fiber optics. OLT. OLT. Okay, uh, let me see here. Nobody in TikTok has guessed it. Let me flip over to the chat box. See who's in here. Shotzi's in the house drinking a Dr. Pepper as usual. Welcome back, Mr. Shotzi. Mr. Shotzi R C D D. There you go. There you go. OLT. What does that stand for? Come on now. You got this. You got this. Optical line terminal. Optical line terminal. It's a device that's uh used in pond networks, passive optical networks. Upcoming events.

Training Updates And Upcoming Topics

SPEAKER_00 2:48

Did you see the episode I just published last week? I did an interview with Don Sanders. He's a trainer for E2 Optics. E2 Optics, RKAS 1992 is in the house. Timothy Beck's in the house. We talked about how to get the most out of your training. How to get the most out of your training. You know, before class, during class, even after class. Yep. And then uh next week uh I'm doing a show on hearing protection. Gotta record it. I got all this stuff already done. I just got to record it. Let's get right into the questions. First

Are Buildings Becoming AI-Ready

SPEAKER_00 3:27

question comes from Melissa. She sent this to me on LinkedIn. And she wants to know are we designing cabling systems for today's needs? Or are we finally starting to design for AI ready buildings? AI ready buildings, not AI data centers, AI ready buildings. So the cancer that is if you're following the TDMM, yes. If you're following the Itza manual, yes, I think you are. Because they call for a minimum of a a uh uh they recommend a cat six cable for for office buildings, minimum cat 5e. So if you do that, I think we are building them up. And there's also building automation and how to do all the design work. I think we are. I think we are, but here's the thing AI is constantly changing. AI is also changing the way that that owners, building owners, their expectations. You know, we talk they got building automation, but not because of AI. They want more out of their building systems, more out of their building cabling. And they might want and they're starting to focus more on um high power densities, and that affects us. High power densities for all that stuff because you know a lot of times we're doing digital electricity, fault managed power systems, and that stuff's going over balanced twist-to-pair cabling, and that that's gonna have to obviously pay attention to conductor size and ratings, right? But you know, you're still finding that, or not still finding, but I think it reinforces the movement we've seen over the last probably 10 years where there's been a huge shift to doing fiber optic backbones, right? Right um for underground power. I only talk about low voltage stuff. I appreciate that though. Um I appreciate that. TJ's in the house, Scott Myers in the house. Um, so we you know the shift has been to fiber. It's getting to the point that some manufacturers, not all, some manufacturers aren't even making high pair count cabling, copper, high pair count copper cabling anymore, right? Because everything's kind of being shifting towards fiber. That doesn't mean you can't buy hundred pair cable, 200 pair cable, 400 pair cable. There are companies out there still making it, but they're getting fewer and fewer. But the decision process that's driven by the building owners is the one is the ones that are going to be driving the decisions. And if you build in the flexibility now, that's gonna reduce the cost later on, right? It's like the old Amco commercial. You can pay me now. Well, you can pay me later. There you go.

When Cat 6A Pays Off

SPEAKER_00 6:13

The next question this comes from Tyler, and Tyler sent this to me on Instagram. I've been seeing more specs calling for Cat 6A everywhere. When is it actually worth the extra investment? Oh my gosh, this is a good one because you know people argue about this all day long. So if you've got a customer that is what I call an early adopter, early adopter, they like to beat the leading edge of technology. They want to have the latest and greatest stuff when it comes out. That's gonna be the kind of person who you really want to kind of try to spec for Cat 6A. If they're if they even think about they're gonna be doing Wi-Fi 7, you want to make sure you're doing Cat 6A. But there's always that age-old consideration, right? The budget versus the long-term performance. If we put that Cat 6A cable in now, Cat 6A cable does cost more. It's heavier, it's a little harder to terminate, and that means more labor, so it's more costly to put in today. How soon do we think we're gonna be reaping from that return on their investment? That's a that is a cost consideration. And some companies can write that off, say we don't care, we're early adopters. Other ones, they're gonna put it in, but they want to see us using that Cat 68 cable. And that might mean they might have to um start putting in newer switches, newer servers. Right? So design for the life cycle. That's what I always tell people. Design for the life cycle. Don't design for today because you'll find, especially when the customer starts taking advantage of that future proofing that you've done, they're gonna be happy with you, and you're most likely to get a repeat customer. And you want repeat customers because they aren't so critical on the price. They're willing to work with you. Let's take a short break.

Advertising Break And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Are you trying to reach the technicians, project managers, and decision makers of the ICT industry? Then why aren't you advertising on Let's Talk Cabling? With over 150,000 impressions a month across podcasts, YouTube, and social media, this isn't just a show, it's the go-to resource for the low voltage industry. We spotlight the tools, training, and technology shaping the future of structured cabling, and your brand could be front and center. Don't just get noticed, get trusted. Email Chuck at advertising at letstalkcabling.com and let's connect your brand to the right audience today.

SPEAKER_00 8:51

Willing to work with you. The next

Keeping Great Technicians From Leaving

SPEAKER_00 8:53

question, this comes from Jennifer on Facebook. She asks, um, we're struggling to find experienced technicians. What companies, what are companies doing that actually keeps good people around? You know, this is like the third or fourth week. I've seen some variation of this question. Um right now, training. Training gives you the competitive edge. There's companies like E2 Optics, IES, Vision Technologies that actively invest in their technicians, actively invest in their installers. If you start doing that, you will get a you will get a reputation within your region that, hey, if you go work for them, they actually pay for you to get training. There's a lot of technicians out there who want to learn, who want to become better. There's lots of those technicians. K-Man's in the house. Um, they want those, but they want to work for a company that offers that because they may not be have enough money to do that on their own. They might be a young dad or young mom with two or three kids. They want, there's a lot more people out there wanting to learn than I think our industry goes. So have a good training program. On top of that, have a good career path for those people when you bring them in. I was just talking to somebody just, was it yesterday? I think yesterday, and they were talking about they love who they work for, but it's a small company, so there's really no career path to move up because there's only you know four or five people within the entire company. While some people may flourish in that environment, right? While some people may flourish in that environment, most people want to have a career path. They want to climb up, they want more responsibility, they want more pay. They want more pay. So, with that, another one, another thing that's going to differentiate you from other people's mentorship, mentorship programs. Pixie has a mentorship program. They just actually closed the um the applications just like on the beginning of this month. But you can create your own burnout program. That's not your own burnout program, your own uh your own mentorship programs. I should do a show on how to create a mentorship program. I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. Somebody remind me of that, because I'll forget it by the end of this uh end of this thing. Um and watch out for um burnout because it happens. If all you do is pull cable, terminate cable, test cable, that's fine and dandy, but at some point you're gonna start burning out on that and you're gonna start wanting to do something more. Company culture absolutely affects retention. So, what is the company culture? Is it is it is it one that's encourages all these self-development, or is it one that just says they do, but they actually don't do it. That's how you attract technicians, that's how you keep technicians, right? Companies better learn soon. If you want the best technicians, number one, you gotta pay for that. That's there's a cost of that. Give them the money that they deserve. Number two, give them the recognition that they serve. Number three, challenge them. Give them, don't just give stuff to them, challenge them, tell them, look, I we want you to get this certification by this date. They love that kind of stuff. They eat it up. They absolutely eat it up. Next question.

Why Credentialing Tests Trip Veterans

SPEAKER_00 12:21

This comes from Ramon, and it sent to me on TikTok. Why do experienced technicians still fail cable certifications sometimes? So he's talking about credentialing, not certification. Number one, go watch the episode that came out on Monday because I talked about that. I talked about tips with with Donald Sanders, you know, things you need to know before you take that test, ways you can improve where you're actually there learning the material. What can you do after you get your credential? Number one, I recommend you go watch that. Monday's episode just came out on Monday with Donald Sanders. It's on YouTube, it's on LinkedIn, it's on Facebook. Eventually, parts of it will start coming out on TikTok too. And what but one of the reasons is because number one, when you're a technician in the field, you may you don't you're not really taught. You're only taught the very basics. What is code? What is standards? What are best practices? What are manufacturers' recommendations? What is the hierarchy of all that stuff? Which which book here's here I won't you put it in the chat box, put it in the chat box which document is most important? Codes, standards, or best practices. Tell me in the chat box, which document do you think is the one that you really should be following? Okay, codes, standards, or best practices. Because most people do not understand that. They don't. And that's part of the problem. 10,000 points to Mr. Keith on TikTok, because he said best practices. Excellent. Yes. Some people say, well, Chuck, you should always follow the code book, Chuck. You should follow the code book, but guess what also follows the code book? The standards and the best practices. They go above and beyond. Daryl, the RCDD's in the house, right? So yes, they are. They go above and beyond. Remember this, codes are only for safety. Standards are for performance. Standards and best practices always follow the code book. So, yes, that's one of the reasons why people fail those credentialing classes because those things always keep moving. The goal line keeps moving. Every time those committees come together to update the standards, stuff moves. Look at our acronyms. Our acronyms are always changing. That's a perfect example of how our standards are always moving. And on top of that, when a new standard gets published, it takes a while for the new information to make it to the best practice manuals, to make it to the certification courses. And then when you read it, you're like, what the heck they talk about? I'll give you a perfect example. The per a perfect example. Everybody, well, not everybody, but most people are aware that the fiber optic color code has 12 colors. But guess what? There's actually 16. That's actually our new development that's happened recently. There's actually 16 colors in the fiber optic color code. And I bet you TJ knows those four additional colors. The cable guy's in the house. Hey cable guy. So those those those standards are always moving, right? They're always, always moving. Um also technicians, installers, the four additional colors are olive, magenta, tan, and lime. Olive magenta, tan and lime. Thanks for asking. Lucky number two. Yes. So and also most technicians are in this field because they like working with their hands. They weren't the kind of person typically, I'm not gonna say always, I'll say typically, they're not the type of person who typically flourished in school. They didn't, they don't like reading, they don't like doing that kind of stuff, they like building things, they like making things, right? So they get out of school, they've been out of school for five years, seven years. And uh, oh wow, wow. You know, Daryl, I've been saying that, I've been saying that, and I've been saying that. Nobody believes me. So for those who may not know this, Daryl said in the TikTok feed, and he works for a very well-known engineering firm. He says they lost two RCDDs in the last couple days to data centers, and they started them out at, listen to this, $250,000. Maybe I need to go apply there. Yeah, I I can make $250,000 for uh uh for the last you know few years of my career, pay off my last debt so I can retire. Absolutely, absolutely. Um, what's the reasoning for the additional colors? It seems like it would throw off all the binders because there are you're starting to see stuff done in groups of 16 now, 16 and 32, so that's why they did that. Um so but you still see, you won't see those as often though. Okay, you won't see those as often. So again, getting back to my question, you know, they're you know, it's been five years, ten years, and they gotta kind of remap their brain again to learning, to testing. There's a whole thing to reading test questions and being able to understand them. You know, most people who know me who've talked to me in person, you know I got ADHD. My brain is going a million miles an hour. If I am not looking you directly in the eyes, I'm probably thinking about something else. So if I'm ever talking to you, I'm doing it, just kind of snap. Hey, Chuck, back here, focus with me. I my mind is going a million different ways. And that's just one of the you know, one of the things I have with my ADHD, but it also helps me in other areas. So what happens is we got to remap our brains when we go to these classes, and the good classes absolutely help people with that. Absolutely help people with that. Okay. Next question.

PoE Mistakes With Bundles And Testing

SPEAKER_00 18:13

This comes from Alex from YouTube. With PoE devices getting more powerful every year, what installation mistakes are causing the biggest headaches? Um, yeah, so right now I'm working with uh the PoE consortium, trying to work out a deal with them so um I can actually serve on some of their one or more of their committees so I can help influence the PoE stuff. We're not quite there yet. We don't have anything settled yet, but I really hope they'll get that settled soon. But there are a lot of things for PoE, power over the Ethernet. The big one is the big thing you gotta watch out for uh bundle sizes. You know, bundle size. There's a lot of confusion again. Going back to code standards best practices, you know, the code says you can have a lot more cables in a bundle for PoE than than the best practice manuals do. When you get a bunch of cables in a bundle and they're all doing DC current, that raises the temperature of the cable, and all those cables together increase the bundle temperature, which affects the performance, which also affects the attenuation on that cable. Also, switches have power budgets, you know. So you might have a switch that might not be able to do, that might be able to do 100 watts, a 24-port switch doing 100 watts, but I bet you not all 24 ports can do 100 watts. So you gotta make sure that you do your budgets to make sure that you don't overload that switch. In fact, there's a there's a percentage. I want to say it's I want to say it's 60%, 70%. So whatever the budget is, you don't want to have more stuff going out 60% of the maximum capacity of that switch. Lucky number two says Bixie and FOA were the two classes I'd recommend to anyone. Then read the five-minute forman and you're set. What is the five-minute foreman? I've never heard that before. Okay. All right, so there you go. Um, I'm gonna have to look that up. The five-minute forman. That sounds pretty cool. Uh, then another place where people mess up with power over Ethernet is testing it correctly. Most people will just do a regular test, but there are some additional tests that you need to run to make sure that's gonna work with power over Ethernet.

Cybersecurity As Systems Merge

SPEAKER_00 20:26

The next question this comes from Sarah. Sarah. And Sarah wants to know how are you explaining cybersecurity responsibilities to a customer when the physical physical security and the IT networks keep merging. Okay, so physical security, um, examples of that would be like locked doors, um, um, access control, stuff like that. Physical that that those kinds of components are now working on the network. The network. That's additional information, additional bandwidth that that network has to be able to hold. So, again, that's a good reason for why maybe you might want to go to Cat 6A instead of Cat 6. But this is also gonna put a challenge between us, the cable integrators, the IT department, and maybe even the companies who are making the switches. We all got to talk to each other. Because you know, if you don't communicate, what's gonna happen is they're gonna get a net a system installed power over Ethernet that's not gonna work right, and then the customer's left holding the bag. Okay? So watch out. And then the best thing to do is document everything that you're doing, okay? Difficult personalities, co-workers, conflict, etc. Exactly. Exactly. I'm I'm gonna is that a book or is that a PDF? Because I definitely want to go check that out. Uh next question comes from Chris on Facebook.

What AI Data Centers Change

SPEAKER_00 21:50

Chris wants to know everyone talks about AI data centers, but what do they actually change? Change what what do they what what but what does That actually changed for contractors in the field. AI data centers, the racks are way more filled out. So you got to think about cable management. You got to think about power loading. You got to think about heat dissipation. You got to think about hot aisles and cold aisles. All that stuff affects how the data centers, right? How the data centers are done. Inside of data centers, also the installation becomes more precise. You know, I see a lot of pictures of people doing low voltage network stuff on Facebook groups, stuff like that. And there's two groups of people generally. There's the group that says, ah, it doesn't matter how it looks as long as it works. And then there's the group that goes overboard and makes it look super pretty. Data center technicians, data center designers are going to want the best, the absolute best. They're going to want it to perform and they're going to want it to look good because it is a data center. And this increases the demand for skilled labor. And it's going to keep growing. I saw somewhere that we have right now, there was like 5,000 data centers in the U.S. in some form stage of planning or or building right now. 5,000 data centers. And according to Daryl, he just lost two of his PMs to a to uh to a data center, making $250,000 a year. I can't tell my wife that because she'll tell me to go work for them because that's $250,000. That's a little bit more than uh than what Chuck is making, in case you didn't know that.

Habits That Make Installers Stand Out

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Noah from TikTok, he wants to know I've only been in the trade a couple years. What's one habit that separates average installers from from people from the people that everyone wants on their projects? Okay. I think the biggest skill you can have is continuous learner. Continuous learner. Always learning. You know, don't take the status quo. If when somebody says, well, we can't untwist the pairs more than a half of an inch. Why? Please explain that to me. Be curious. Oh, what's that? What's that? There's a quote from a movie. Wish I could remember the name of the movie, um, where the guy's a soccer coach and he's playing darts against this uh guy who's who, if they win, he gets control of the football team or something. And he talks about this quote, uh uh Be curious. I can't remember, I wish I can remember that quote. Be curious, right? Be curious. Um then attention to detail. That's what makes the difference. When you're the person, when they say, Oh, well, we got this high-profile project. Well, let's send Chuck out there because we know it's going to get done right. Right? You've built a reputation within your company, they know that you're the person who does it, that you do it right, you do it right even when nobody's looking. Craftsmanship reflects professionalism, right? The next big thing. Communicate, communicate, communicate. You know, we're in our industry, we work in a communications industry, and what do we suck at? Communicating. Yeah. So communicate everything, right? You know, keep going.

Protecting Margins With Better Estimating

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Question comes from David on LinkedIn. And David wants to know estimating becomes harder every year. How do you protect your margins when owners expect more technology without increasing their budgets? Okay. A couple suggestions here for you, Nat. Number one, scope gaps create hidden costs. So when you when the when the when that RFP, that RFQ comes to you, read through it two or three times before you decide. That's pro tip number one. Document, document, document. Read through that that RFP, RFQ two or three times before you decide whether or not you want to work on it. Because a scope of work that's got a lot of obvious omissions, some customers just don't understand that. And then what happens is that's gonna increase the cost. You need to make sure that you, you know, you know early what assumptions are gonna need that documentation. You need to make sure that you have a good, solid change management that's gonna protect your profitability. Most people don't have change order uh plans. In fact, that's something we're talking about in our study group tonight, is uh is uh is change management. Labor affects pricing. You know, just because you're moving, you know, uh something from three feet over, like a rack or something like that, that takes labor to do that. That wasn't estimated in the project. Wasn't estimated in the project. So you gotta make sure that you know that.

Who Owns Failures After Commissioning

SPEAKER_00 26:49

Alrighty, one final question. This comes from Marcus. As building systems converge onto one network, who's ultimately responsible when something stops working? So you so you if you're talking about after the commissioning, the owner, the owner of the building, the IT department, they're the ones who have clear ownership. And that's why it's essential for them, especially during the design phase, during the installation phase, to have cross-discipline coordination. Talk to the cable guys, talk to the electricians, talk to the HVAC people, talk to the um the manufacturers, the servers, the switches, the routers, right? Make sure that you have a way to document those speeds through troubleshooting. And make sure you have a good commissioning plan. Now, customers don't always know everything. Again, I've said this before. People always say customers are always right. No, they're not. Sometimes you gotta educate customers because sometimes, yeah, sometimes they've got Milwaukee taste, but a Ryobi budget, right? Yeah, you know what I mean by that. They just have unrealistic expectations. So it's up to you to educate them. Don't change your price just because they had a bad, a bad uh understanding of what's gonna take to get this job done. Okay? That's always gonna be something. And the the key thing is after you do the project, after you've done the closeout documentation, after the punch list is done, and then you got your final, you know, the retainers have been released, and you got you paid, still once a year, once every six months, just call up the customer, say, hey, just checking on you, see how everything's going, how's the cable point working? Any issues? Because if you stay in front of the customer, that long-term support, they're gonna think about that, and that's gonna, and that's gonna help them when they want to do a redesign. A redesign. So that's a good thing to do. A good thing to do.

Final Wrap And Next Week

SPEAKER_00 28:55

All right, I have finished all my questions for tonight. Boy, I went through those pretty fast. Oh my gosh, look at all those things here. Alrighty, let me see. Uh drinking Mountain Dew from uh Imagine Steve show on the stream. There you go. He was drinking Mountain Dew. Good job. Uh you know what? For some reason, huh? That stuff didn't show up. The chats didn't show up in the thing. So there you go. All right, everybody, see you next Wednesday night, 6 p.m. Make sure you send your questions now. Okay, so that way I can get your questions in. So until next time, remember everybody, knowledge is power.