Jan 2010

MLB Network’s HDTV Integration Relied Heavily on TSG’s Advanced Equipment Schedule Management

Secaucus, NJ

When The Systems Group began working on MLB’s HDTV facility, the network was planning on making its permanent home in New York City, and had announced plans to work with Vornado Realty Trust to create a $435 million, 21-story headquarters in Harlem by mid-2010, with Secaucus as a temporary solution.  When the Vornado project lost its funding, MLBN decided that its temporary solution had become its long-term solution and that its entire system would be housed in the former home of MSNBC, in Secaucus, N.J.  – a facility designed and built by TSG in 1996.

TSG responded quickly to this development with an intensive equipment schedule management and value engineering effort.  The original plan, initiated two years ago, was to create a hybrid SD/HD plant with live games shot in the 16:9 aspect ratio. That plan morphed into a 720p HD infrastructure managed by an NVISION 576 x 1040 router, Miran¬da Kaleido-X multiviewer, a Grass Valley storage area network (SAN), Evertz modular equipment, an Omneon Spectrum server and a Pro-Bel Morpheus automation system.  A multilayered, file-based infrastructure was designed that built on the facility’s circa 1996 state-of-the-art digital pro¬duction environment.

As a result, Belinda Binkley, Director of TSG’s Project Operations and Project Manager for the MLB project, was faced with controlling a massive amount of equipment schedule modifications resulting in over 350 change orders representing design changes ranging from redesign and value engineering efforts to maximizing the integration of customer-furnished equipment into the facility. 

Belinda turned to TSG’s internally-developed Tracker© software which provided rigorous control of project capital through asset management.  Tracker© enabled TSG to minimize the impact of revisions to the project timeline and budgets through its dynamic engineering interface and direct integration with TSG’s procurement system.  Using this tool, TSG was able to go beyond just making changes to the base equipment schedule and forecast the impact of potential changes on existing project budgets; develop multiple change order scenarios simultaneously; move items between unapproved change orders; track change and edit histories for each equipment line; see real-time purchasing status for all equipment lines; and, critical on such a fast-track project, directly interface with TSG’s project and accounting system, MS Dynamics SL for up-to-the-minute procurement management.

At the time of launch, the MLBN equipment schedule represented the over 13,000 pieces of equipment installed in the facility.  The new direction, coupled with emerging technologies, scope expansion, installation location changes, and model number revisions required thousands of edits to the base equipment schedule to ensure engineering and vendor updates were quickly communicated to and acted upon by the project team.  TSG’s extensive experience and sophisticated equipment management tools ensured that MLBN’s new home was a homerun.

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