The broadcast control room at the Live-Events Arena & Broadcast Hub is energized, the fiber backbone has passed certification end to end and the center-hung LED board is hanging over the bowl. With those three milestones behind us, the 12,500-seat arena moves from a building job into a systems job, on a schedule that has worked backwards from opening night from the first day.
A building wired like a broadcast facility
The arena carries more technology per square foot than most office buildings. Camera positions, production feeds, LED ribbon boards, the center-hung display, distributed audio, point-of-sale, wireless and security all ride the same fiber backbone back to the broadcast hub. Every one of those systems has its own installer, and several belong to the owner's vendors rather than to our contract.
That is why the backbone came first. Pathways, cable tray and riser sleeves were coordinated in the model before concrete was placed, so the low-voltage and AV crews could pull fiber into finished pathways instead of fighting the mechanical trades for ceiling space.
Opening night does not move, so we scheduled every system test backwards from it. The backbone had to be certified by today, and it is.
Project executive, ScottHarry
One schedule for every trade and every vendor
With the building dried in, the job is now about density and handoffs. Electrical, mechanical, fire protection, low-voltage, AV, broadcast integrators and the owner's display vendor are all working the concourses and the bowl at the same time.
- Zoned work areas. The building is split into zones, each with its own short-interval plan and a foreman who owns the handoffs.
- Owner vendors on our pull plan. Display, broadcast and ticketing vendors attend the weekly pull-planning session and their access dates sit on the same schedule as ours.
- Clean, conditioned rooms first. The broadcast hub and the telecom rooms received permanent power and cooling ahead of the rest of the building, so sensitive equipment could be installed in protected space.
- Tested as it lands. Every fiber strand is tested and labeled at install, so certification is a record, not a hunt.
What comes next
The coming months focus on integrated testing: production feeds from every camera position to the hub, the LED board running full content, life-safety overrides on the audio and display systems, and a full event rehearsal with the owner's operations team running the building. Training is staged so each operator group learns its system as it is turned over, not all at once in the final week.
Our thanks go to every crew, integrator and vendor who has worked the bowl to get here.
