Planning

I met with Citizen Potawatomi Nation (CPN) personnel yesterday along with the Carestream DRX project manager to review plans for their new room and for the PACS installation.  My background is with network integration so I was basically just listening and soaking it all in when they were talking about modifying their Unistrut system, room positioning and workflow for various x-ray procedures, etc.  When questions arose about the network integration, I was the "go to" person for all that info.  We discussed IP addressing, network cabling requirements, how we were going to connect their radiology network to their clinic network, all those details were right down my alley.

Am back in the office today working in Microsoft Project and Visio to create a detailed project plan and network drawing.  This is a fairly complex project with dozens of critical steps ranging from electrical to room remodeling to firewall installation, network cabling, documentation, installation and training.  I like to use MS Project to help me understand the timeframes and relationships to each task.  I just start pounding away writing all the tasks in Project, then go in later and organize them, link them together so that one task must be completed before the other task can start, and assign resources to each task.  This way I can get a general timeline overview of the entire project, see where we are going to have critical time path problems, and start putting a schedule together.

I use Visio to document their current network and create a visual reference for the planned network.  Many people use spreadsheets for this task, but I find Visio allows me to create a graphic diagram that is much easier for people to follow and understand.  From within Visio I can then export spreadsheet like information documenting how things are installed.  This includes IP addresses, DNS info, gateways, VPN tunnels, NAT mapping, DICOM info such as AET and ports, etc.

I am a VERY BIG believer in documentation.  The last few PACS systems we have installed have taken less than a week before the customer was fully operational.  I hear and even see horror stories where it can take months to get a PACS system up and running.  I believe that proper planning up front can eliminate those types of problems.  Just like painting a car or a house, most of the work is up front in the "prep" time, in our case, the planning time.  Do all your work up front and then when it comes time to "paint" or install, things go much quicker and smoother.