Edwards’ Hire broadcast a moment not to be missed

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.

 

Completing her mission on time, the challenge then 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 Edwards’ AV Hire team, the Men in Black, put their thinking caps on and came up with a cutting edge solution that would tick every box. Thinking caps were duly removed and replaced with hard hats. The Men in Black became the Men in Hi-Viz as they put together a system that would enable video to be transmitted safely from a working building site to the official celebrations and further afield.

 

Edwards assembled a solution that utilized a combination of web streaming and cellular data transfer systems. This empowered anyone in any location to sign into a web cast and watch the event happening in real time. As a safety precaution, Edwards ran two identical systems side by side ensuring that if there were any dropouts or technical issues they were able to switch over to the second system seamlessly.

 

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.

 

The footage: Waterview Connection footage

 

Edwards have a long established relationship with the Well-Connected Alliance who are building the Waterview Connection. Edwards have provided the AV solution, the AV hire equipment and the technical support for many project launches and commissioning celebrations. Edwards provided the AV required for broadcasting Alice at the start of her journey in October 2013 and were privileged to be there at the end to capture the final few moments of a project that engaged a global audience.