Hot take: The "cable management" obsession is ruining good buildings

I was reading this post on a property management forum last week about how someone spent $12,000 installing hidden cable channels in a new office build. It got me thinking about all the older buildings I manage where tenants just run cables along baseboards or through drop ceilings and nobody cares. These modern buildings with the fancy trunking systems end up being impossible to modify when a tenant moves out. You have to rip out whole sections just to change a data run. I think we've convinced ourselves that visible cables are some kind of crime, but really they're just functional. Does anyone else manage older properties and find the cable management trend feels like a waste of money in practice?

2 comments

2 Comments

wyatt_chen8615d ago

Nah, I gotta push back on this. A rat's nest of cables everywhere doesn't just look lazy, it makes it way harder to tell what's actually connected to what when something breaks (and it will). Spending a bit upfront on good cable management means you're not tripping over loose wires or dealing with someone accidentally yanking out the wrong network cable during a power outage.

angela_park15d ago

Oh man, @wyatt_chen86 is out here calling me out and I feel personally attacked because my server rack literally looks like a spaghetti monster threw up in it. Guess I should actually zip-tie those cables before the next power outage makes me regret my life choices.