Champion Solutions and Strategic Plays Bring Integrated systems to the NFL
by Betsy Ziobron and Janet Crook

After 30 NFL seasons, the home of the Chicago Bears temporarily closed its doors at the end of the 2001 playoffs. Modeled after ancient Greek and Roman stadiums, is receiving a much-needed facelift as part of Chicago’s Lakefront Improvement Plan. The $600 million renovation preserves the historic 1926 stadium by leaving intact the existing pair of colonnades while the stadium interior is updated with a new 66,000-seat facility. Behind the scenes, new integrated structured cabling supports the systems that keep Soldier Field up and running.

Willing to depart for only one football season, the Bears played their 2002 home games at the University of Illinois while crews began the massive task of building Soldier Field’s new bowl, which is higher than the existing colonnades by 50 feet. A tri-venture between three major general contractors, the project called for the installation of an integrated structured cabling system and network hardware to support voice, data, point-of-sale systems, ATMs, Internet access, building automation processes, and the stadium’s critical security.

Integrated Backbones
During the bidding process, Turner Construction Company (www.turnerconstruction.com), one of the nation’s leading builders and a Soldier Field general contractor, requested bids for the integrated structured cabling system. Illinois-based Huen Electric (www.huenelectric.com), an electrical construction company with low-voltage specialty wiring expertise, bid on the project with the SureBIT solution. SureBIT is a combination of SPEEDGAIN® jacks, patch panels, and patch cords, from Hubbell Premise Wiring and MegaLAN Category 5E cable from Mohawk/CDT (www.mohawk-cdt.com). “We chose to bid with the Hubbell-Mohawk solution because of the ease of product installation, local sales support, and ample local distributor inventory,” says Pete Stanish, vice president of Huen Electric. “We knew those benefits would help us stay on schedule, as well as provide quality products and service.”

With a project completion date of September 2003, the start of the NFL season, Huen Electric had only five months for the installation, testing, and certification of the system. Following the Bears’ last playoff game at Soldier Field, crews began to remove the old cabling and prepare for the installation of the integrated structured cabling system. “We were in a great position being able to work on a premier project like Soldier Field,” says Paul Campbell, project manager for Huen Electric. “We knew it presented a huge challenge due to the project size and complexity, but I was confident that we would make the completion date.”
The backbone cabling for Soldier Field’s integrated system wraps around the stadium via Hubbell Premise Wiring NEXTFRAME® Ladder Racks on the service level and up to stacked telecommunications rooms (TRs) in each quadrant. The backbone cabling runs clockwise and counterclockwise from the main cross connect (MC) located in the northwest quadrant. The voice backbone consists of over 40,000 feet of twisted-pair Category 3, 900-pair ARMM cable for telephone, modem, and fax capabilities. The voice backbone cabling terminates at Hubbell Premise Wiring’s 110 Cross Connect system using 300-pair 110 wiring blocks and cable management troughs.
The data backbone is comprised of 12 strands of 50-micron multimode fiber from Mohawk/CDT (www.mohawk-cdt.com) running to each of the 30 TRs to support point-of-sale systems, Internet access, ATMs, and some building automation processes. Another 12 strands of Mohawk 62.5-micron multimode fiber run to each TR for the stadium’s critical security backbone. “The security backbone supports video surveillance and access control for today’s heightened security,” says Stanish. “We also implemented six strands of singlemode fiber to each TR for future proofing purposes, allowing the stadium to move to a 10Gig network if needed in the future.”
Huen Electric crews pulled all of the backbone cabling for voice, data, and security at the same time. “It was much more cost effective to pull everything together than bringing in a separate security contractor to run their own security backbone,” says Stanish. “Within the MC and each TR, the various system fiber is separated so that it’s easy to distinguish which is which.” Due to the sheer amount of fiber, Huen Electric crews used a pulley system to pull the fiber through the cable trays around the entire stadium.

In each of the 30 TRs, the fiber optic cable terminates via over 2,000 Hubbell OPTIchannel adhesive fiber optic connectors. SC-type connectors were used for both the 50-micron multimode data system fiber and singlemode fiber. ST-type connectors were used for the 62.5-micron security system fiber. Fiber terminates via Hubbell’s OPTIchannel SC- and ST-style Fiber Six-Pack adapter panels installed in OPTIchannel rack mount enclosures. The OPTIchannel system facilitates securing cable, storing fiber slack, and arranging and identifying the terminated fibers. All of the cable management in the MC and TRs is achieved with Hubbell’s easy-to-use 19-inch NEXTFRAME® equipment racks, horizontal cable organizers, and ladder racks that feature heavy-duty construction.

Winning Connections
The SureBIT solution chosen for the Soldier Field’s horizontal voice and data distribution system includes Hubbell’s 25-year Mission Critical® Plus warranty, which guarantees the components, performance, and installation integrity of the system. Under the warranty, the system will exceed applicable ANSI/TIA/EIA and ISO/IEC channel specifications, and support any current or future applications required to run on the cabling. As verified by in-house and independent testing using state-of-the-art equipment, SureBIT also provides guaranteed PSACR (Power Sum Attenuation-to-Crosstalk Ratio) headroom, which ensures optimal system performance and assists in limiting the BER (Bit Error Rate) that can cause costly retransmissions and downtime.
From the TRs, nearly 600,000 feet of Category 5e cable goes out to 2300 connections located in press boxes, 133 luxury suites, stadium offices, and concession stands throughout the stadium. In each TR, the Category 5e cable terminates at Hubbell’s 48-port SPEEDGAIN Category 5E patch panels installed in Hubbell’s NEXTFRAME equipment racks. At each workstation, the cable terminates at Hubbell Xcelerator® jacks to provide one voice and one data connection. Xcelerator jacks feature Hubbell’s Quick Lace™ termination process for a faster, simpler, and more reliable termination. The Xcelerator jacks are installed in Hubbell’s Infin-e-Station™ faceplates, a modular plate system that allows for easy front-loading installation of the jacks.
“ The possibilities are endless for Soldier Field,” says Stanish. “With network drops everywhere, they’ll have fast Internet access and be able to network all of the cash registers for a point-of-sale system.” The structured cabling system delivers 10 Mbps to the desktop with Gigabit Ethernet running on the backbone. According to Stanish, Soldier Field will have no problem moving to 10 Gigabit in the future.

The massive size of the Soldier Field stadium and short project timeline presented many challenges for the cabling crews. “To deal with the enormous size of the stadium, crews spent entire days working in specific quadrants of the stadium where we had facilities and storage areas,” says Stanish. Communications contractors are often at the mercy of other trades, because much of the work can’t be done until other construction is completed. “With several trades working simultaneously under extremely tight deadlines, this project required a huge amount of coordination in the field,” says Stanish. “The ongoing construction made it difficult to access elevators and closets for testing and troubleshooting.” Although some of the other trades working on the Soldier Field project fell behind schedule due to the size of the project, the 2003 NFL season completion date could not be extended. “Near the end of the project, we had to compensate for project delays by increasing the number of cabling crews to meet the deadline,” says Stanish.
While Bears fans enjoy Soldier Field’s improved seating and better sightlines for the 2003 NFL season, they are unaware of the behind-the-scenes advanced integrated structured cabling system that keeps everything up and running and secure. “The month of August was extremely hectic, but it was just a matter of getting it done in time for football,” says Stanish. “Here in Illinois, we’re looking forward to seeing the Bears play at this fine facility and hopefully get to another Superbowl.”

Janet Crook is with Hubbell Premise Wiring Marketing Communications.
Betsy Ziobron is a freelance writer for the cabling industry.
© 2003 Hubbell Premise Wiring.