Lessons from one of the biggest sports events of the year

When the pandemic started, some IT teams had not fully prepared for the unexpected. They found themselves scrambling to upgrade their infrastructure so they could adopt new business models. But for some people — particularly John Schulz and Tom Sofka — preparing for every conceivable situation has long been a way of life.

As Spectrum Business project managers, their jobs demand it. Numerous clients depend on them for the timely, on-budget installation of connectivity solutions.

Recently, the duo was handed their most high-profile project yet: Deliver reliable connectivity for one of the biggest sports events of 2021.

Spectrum Business had been tapped by a technology contractor to provide internet, WiFi and TV service for nine locations including the event stadium, media center, ticket office and player hotels. They were also engaged by the city in which the event was being held to provide connectivity for six additional locations associated with an interactive sports theme park that would be open before the big game.

Schulz and Sofka, as well as the Spectrum Business Field Operations and Enterprise Technical Support teams, had only a month to wrap everything up. I recently spoke with them about the “preparation best practices” they put into action to get the job done.
 

Matt Dunn: What’s the first thing you did when handed this project?

Tom Sofka: Having a list of key contacts is important for any project and one of the first things we pulled together. There were 15 locations and 30 areas within them that needed some combination of internet, WiFi and TV service, so making sure we had an accurate list of contacts and backup contacts for every site was essential.

MD: How did you sort out what resources were needed for each location?

John Schulz: The best way to do that is to visit them in person, and we were able to work with our key contacts to gain access to server rooms and other key areas at each location so we could identify what Field Operations team members we had to send out with the necessary equipment.

Thankfully, we already had fiber running to the hotels and other facilities where we needed to provide Dedicated Fiber Internet (DFI) service, so we were able to avoid having to do time-consuming construction.
 

MD: What unexpected challenges did you encounter, and how did you deal with them?

JS: We found out two weeks before the game that the home team would be playing. As a result, we were asked to upgrade bandwidth at several of the locations where we had just installed FIA because it was anticipated there would be a much larger influx of network traffic than originally expected.

TS: In our role, you always have to be ready for the unexpected. We’ve dealt with “surprises” like this many times over, so we knew our Service Delivery team was ready to pull in the people who could expedite things and get everything done on time.
 

MD: What did you do to ensure everything went as smoothly as possible on game day?

JS: We set up a dedicated toll-free number that was staffed 24/7 by our Field Operations team during the week of the game that Spectrum Business employees working on the project could call if they had questions or needed assistance. More importantly, for that same week, we also set up a separate toll-free number staffed by our Enterprise Technical Support team around the clock so the client could quickly reach someone if there were technical difficulties.

We didn’t want to leave anything to chance, so we also provided the client with direct contact information for team members in case problems surfaced with either phone line.

TS: Because of COVID the teams didn’t arrive until the day before the game. Just before they arrived, we ran a special test to ensure everything was working in the hotels, because we had installed it a few weeks prior and wanted to verify it was still functioning properly.

We also made sure we had technicians on-site at the event on game day, with additional technicians on call.

JS: Everybody was fully prepared. And because of that, everything went really well.