Conference Technologies, Inc.®

Weather Warning
CTI builds emergency paging system for one of nation’s largest soccer complexes

Lightening, hail and tornados. According to Mike Laplante, Manager of Soccer Complex Operations for the City of Overland Park, Kansas, those are the only weather conditions that should ever shut down his playing fields. Yet when they threaten, he and his staff take them very seriously.

The Overland Park Soccer Complex, opened September 1, 2009, is one of the nation’s largest, with 12 regulation fields plus playgrounds and tennis courts covering 96 acres.  “We can have thousands of people on our fields,” Laplante explains, “and if there’s lightening in the area, we have to clear those fields until it’s safe to go back.”

For that reason, a crucial part of the construction process was an emergency paging system, designed and installed by Conference Technologies, Inc.® (CTI).

Building a world-class facility

Laplante says soccer has long been popular in the Kansas City area, but there has always been a shortage of playing fields. Two years ago, after a countywide initiative to build more fields failed, the City of Overland Park decided to take the project on themselves. “Based on the sheer number of teams in Johnson County and the Kansas City metropolitan area, we knew that this would be popular, and that’s definitely proved to be the case,” Laplante says.

In its first three months of operation, the Soccer Complex hosted six tournaments and six weekends of league play, drawing 53,000 players and 215,000 spectators. For 2010, managers expect at least 19 tournaments and 13 weekends of league play, with at least 106,000 players and 300,000 spectators attending.

The architect, the DLR Group of Overland Park, designed a complex with a 16,000-square-foot field house, three concession buildings, two playgrounds, three tennis courts, plus a skate park, with sunshades and cool mist stations at each field. It features one of the largest single-site installations of artificial turf in the United States, making the fields playable in any season.

Laplante says planning and construction was fast: 32 months from conception to opening. “We missed the first two weeks of the fall season,” he says, “but we opened in time for the first major tournament on Labor Day weekend.”

CTI’s Steve Martin, who was the sales engineer who worked on the emergency paging system, says they began conceptual work back in the summer of 2008.  He explains that the city was most concerned about the intelligibility of the pages, but they also wanted a system that would be flexible and cost effective.  “We have six paging zones in the complex. You can do an all-page, page just the field house, page a pod of one concession stand and its four playing fields, or, in the case of the concessions, you could even page just the immediate area to notify someone that his hot dog is ready.”

Martin, in conjunction with CTI’s engineering team, designed the paging system with three possible ways to input pages. All-call or zoned pages can originate from any of four Biamp Net-1 paging stations equipped with push-to-talk microphones. They are located at the reception desk of the field house and in each of the concession buildings. In addition, park personnel can originate a page from any telephone in the complex. Finally, the system is tied to the City of Overland Park’s emergency message system, so should public safety officials decide to do a city-wide emergency broadcast, the park’s paging system would be automatically included.

“We also brought in a professional voice talent to pre-record some messages for the system,” Martin adds. “If teenagers are working at the concession stands, for instance, they may not make the most appropriate page. So they can trigger some canned messages, for example:   ‘‘May we have your attention? Please be advised there is a weather emergency. Please stay tuned for additional information from the Overland Park Soccer complex. ’’”   

Networked systems

In designing the systems, Martin was able to take advantage of some new products that not only improved the quality of the pages but brought the cost of the system down. “The coolest technology,” he says, “is in the networked Biamp AudiaFLEX system at its heart.” 
Using this technology, CTI engineers designed a decentralized system that combines five AudiaFLEX units into four digital signal processors, one installed in each of the main buildings and linked via CobraNet technology over the park’s fiber optic IP network. The DSPs are each able to originate and send pages in their own locations, but they can also distribute them  as appropriate without needing to route them through a central equipment room.
Because the system is DSP-based, the equalization, filtering, delays and other processing features of a concert music system are available. Thus the CTI technicians who installed and tuned the system were able to achieve a higher degree of intelligibility than would be possible with a more traditional paging system.

From the two AudiaFLEX units in the field house, CTI routed audio signals to two Crown CTS4200 amplifiers and then to 36 Atlas ceiling loudspeakers mounted in the building’s interior, five TOA CS-304U weatherproof speakers mounted on the exterior and three Community R.5 weatherproof speakers mounted to the roof of the building.

From the three AudiaFLEX units in the concession buildings, CTI routed the signals to a total of 13 Crown amplifiers and then to 12 Atlas speakers in the interior of the buildings, 18 TOA weatherproof speakers on the exteriors of the buildings, and 24 Community R.5 weatherproof speakers on poles serving the soccer fields.

The combined system covers all of the interior areas of the buildings and all exterior areas. “We don’t have paging speakers in the parking lots,” explains Laplante, “but between the speakers on the buildings and the light poles, anything we broadcast can be heard everywhere.”

CTI also installed an AV system in a meeting room inside the field house. “This is a simple but very nice system using a projector, motorized screen, sound system with DSP and computer and DVD sources,” says Martin. “We were able to simplify their use with a low-cost Pixie control system from SP Controls.”

One of the biggest challenges CTI faced was the construction schedule. “You really can’t install sound or AV systems until the construction is finished,” says Martin. “In this case we were left with less than a month to install the entire system.” Project manager Mark Voutas was able to accomplish this by bringing in technicians from CTI’s offices in St. Louis, Omaha and Wichita, as well as from Kansas City. “Getting it done on time was a huge challenge, ” Voutas says. “We did as much fabrication as we could in the office, and then worked at the site whenever spaces were available to us. The last week was kind of intense, because that's when we did all our testing and final adjustments. ”
Laplante says the performance of the system has been excellent. “We have used it only in emergencies, but it has been very effective.” He says there were several thunderstorms in the fall where they had to completely clear the fields–but the system was intelligible enough to convey detailed information. “We were able to give people real time updates from our weather service, so they could make decisions as to whether they wanted to cancel a practice or game or just wait for the storm to pass by.”

He is also pleased with the level of support he has received from CTI. “Steve has always been right there when we’ve had questions, even if I had to call and ask him basic questions, to make sure I understand what’s at my fingertips.” Laplante says the system has more capabilities than they’ve used so far, but as they go through their first full season, with its tournaments and awards ceremonies, they will explore those capabilities and use more and more of them.

For now, the system is accomplishing its number one mission. “Because we have 96 acres of exposed ground and 60-some light poles out here, the safety of the players and spectators is obviously paramount,” Laplante explains. “The system enables us to get that information out, get them to the safety of a building or a car, and clear the fields until it’s safe to go back on.

“We’re very happy with work CTI has done for us.”