Lambeau Field | Green Bay, USA

LAMBEAU FIELD

Green Bay, USA

Images: Crestron

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restron, a global leader in commercial lighting control, has become a lighting control vendor for Lambeau Field, the iconic home stadium of the Green Bay Packers in Green Bay, Wisconsin. After an extensive evaluation, Crestron was selected to replace and upgrade the stadium-wide controls. The Crestron installation is a cohesive lighting automation system that allows stadium management to easily update lighting preferences and closely monitor and control energy expenditures for the facility. In operation since 1957, Lambeau Field is one of the most legendary and longstanding sporting venues in the United States. The stadium underwent a significant renovation in 2001 and has added several upgrades and expansions since then. As a result of these two decades of changes, there were over 12 disparate lighting control systems from different manufacturers that were not fully integrated. This sparked the search for a single technology provider that could unify and standardise solutions into one ecosystem. “This was a unique project in that the customer, the facilities team at Lambeau Field, started by doing their own research into solutions providers rather than by going through an architect or engineering firm to identify a manufacturer for them,” explained Bill Schafer, Vice President of Sales, Commercial Lighting at Crestron. “It is very rare that an end-user takes on this sort of technology manufacturer recruiting on their own, but when Anne Larson, the Facilities Office Coordinator for Lambeau, reached out to Crestron, we did everything we could to accommodate whatever she needed. Anne had reached out to just about every manufacturer I could name and each of them was put through a rigorous evaluation, but in the end Crestron’s preparation, eagerness, and overall ability to meet every need ended up winning us the project.” Bill played a significant role in this project, not only as a huge Green Bay Packers fan, but by ensuring Anne and her team received everything they needed. He assembled the team with the right personnel on board, remained in constant contact during the installation and facilitated whatever was needed to ensure the experience was as comprehensive and stress-free as possible. The project was a complete design-build that threw many

challenges at everyone working on the installation. Using Anne’s overview of needs and requirements, along with some basic information on the venue’s existing system and older construction documents, Crestron was able to backwards engineer the system to create a starting point. With no real brief in place, other than to replace the failing panels, the team conducted extensive on-site walkthroughs to validate the existing system, note required changes or additions, and from there make revisions to drawings until they were able to create a final drawing set and bill of materials. Lambeau Field transitioned the vast majority of lighting in the stadium to Crestron, which now controls concourses, suites, club seats, event spaces, parking lots, and façade lighting from a single platform. The stadium also implemented robust information security standards that Crestron built into the makeup of its solutions using Active Directory Credential Management, which integrates the authentication on a Crestron device with the stadium’s enterprise-wide IT infrastructure. Through Crestron monitoring, facilities personnel can proactively keep track of their system instead of having to react to situations, ensuring that on gameday, they know the system will work as intended. “The decision to standardise on Crestron was an easy one,” said Anne. “It was evident that Crestron could handle every aspect of the project, including meeting required IT security standards using Active Directory. We now have one vendor and one system that is easy to use and update.” Of course, completing a project in the midst of a global pandemic was always going to be difficult. Restrictions on travel and gatherings made it hard to get the team on site, and the building, shipping and deploying of products became much less efficient. As well as this, the looming deadline of the start of the football season hung over the project, which meant that the team working on site not only had an accelerated timeline, but less capacity and flexibility to accomplish everything on time. Bill explained: “To comply with pandemic-era restrictions, yet still produce, ship, and deploy our products, we built everything in the order that installers planned to install it. “Doing things in this metered style allowed installers to get everything they needed on time while easing the burden on the skeleton crew in our factory that was forced to operate at reduced production capacity due to virus-related protocols.

This streamlined, metered production and deployment strategy resulted in Crestron getting everything shipped from our factory within just five weeks. These products arrived on site with all settings pre-programmed, so installers just had to install them, and they were ready to go right away.” To avoid rewiring, Crestron also included an Ethernet bridge in each cabinet, so contractors could install a panel, take a single Cat5 wire to nearest IDF networking closet, plug it into the assigned port, and allow Crestron to remotely turn the panel on and test it without requiring anyone to be in the stadium. This drastically reduced the amount of time needed for people to be on site. That said, Crestron still put a project manager on site at least once a week, every week, just to provide additional real-time support. Crestron also supplied staff local to the project site to oversee the project and ensure everything was accomplished on schedule. Lambeau Field is exploring the renovation of several other areas, and Crestron also provides extensive flexibility for growth. “Crestron is capable of so much, that as we renovate areas of the building, we’ll have the option to create unique lighting scenes that will only add to the fan experience,” Anne continued. “With Crestron, the Green Bay Packers are confident we can provide a world-class experience for our fans for years to come.” “We’re thrilled to partner with one of America’s most beloved stadiums to implement cutting-edge lighting solutions aimed to deliver the ultimate fan experience on gameday,” concluded Bill. “When designing the new system, our focus was on creating a truly unified ecosystem and single point of lighting control that helps streamline stadium operations and reduce energy consumption. In the last year, stadium usage and capacity changed dramatically. The new Crestron system is highly scalable - it can be configured and built upon as the stadium’s needs change and we look ahead to the future of live events.”