Sharing The Big Moment!
Back in the days before COVID, we streamed the emergence of Alice the tunnel boring machine around the world. Anything is possible!
The challenge for the Well-Connected Alliance was to construct the Waterview Connection, a $1.4 billion highway bypass completing a motorway ring route around Auckland City. Requiring 2.4km of the bypass to be underground, the world’s 10th largest tunnel-boring machine, named Alice, was brought in to construct twin tunnels each large enough for three lanes of traffic.
The challenge for Edwards’ AV Hire team was to broadcast the final few moments of Alice’s journey to a marquee full of special guests and dignitaries sipping bubbles and eating canapes. A marquee that had no power and was 1 kilometre away. A marquee that required a live video feed to a working building site that would in no way support a physical video link between the two locations.
And there was more! The client needed a video link to TV3 and TVNZ to broadcast the final few moments of Alice’s journey on the nations’ TV screens, and needed to cater for interest from overseas, and the organisers in the marquee had to be able to communicate with the staff on site.
The big day arrived, the camera crew were setup and the data technicians were ready to go. Senior tech Shea was huddled in a workers’ tent only 20 metres away from where Alice would appear, ready to push all of the buttons to ensure the right video and audio feeds went to the right places.
As planned Alice’s head broke through the flat concrete wall and Edwards captured and beamed the images straight from the coal face through to the marquee, the TV broadcasting companies and to the rest of the world.
You can trust us with your big moment!
The footage: Waterview Connection footage
