David Gatward

What does 3Sixty Consult do?

We are a specialist construction project management firm that works for clients in the broadcasting arena. Our main focus is managing projects for “mission critical businesses” that have to be resilient against power failure, AC breakdowns and anything that would otherwise cause the business to fail. At Sky News, this would mean “Black on Air” which is simply not an option. As a team with a vast construction knowledge coupled with an understanding of broadcast technology, we know how a studio, teleport or broadcast centre operates. With this knowledge of the environment that the technology occupies, I guess you could say we bridge the gap between the systems integrators and the contractors.

When exactly do you come in — before a studio is built?

Preferably, yes. What we have found over the years is that a client only requires a studio to be built say, every 20 years. Building a new studio for them is not a common event and as such, they may not be equipped with the management skills to do so efficiently. Their teams usually comprise finance managers, broadcast technicians, production staff and a small engineering team none of which have ever built a studio before and usually have their day jobs running the business.

Sure, they will have upgraded some broadcast technology, moved a partition or two, but building a new studio from first principles? Setting budgets? Managing the designs and construction? Probably not! We normally come in to strengthen the team, provide guidance, manage the design in accordance with the broadcast requirements, manage the construction and hand over a fully functional, tested and commissioned studio facility back to the operational team.

When did you get involved with Sky News Arabia?

To be honest, it was a little late. The stage was set as the designs were well advanced and procurement strategies in place through the developer. However, following a swift critique, we were able to challenge and guide designers and get inefficiencies corrected, mechanical and electrical infrastructure resilience added where needed and an appropriate level of building, testing and commissioning to mirror the SAT testing of the broadcast systems. If you ask Sky, it would be the first to acknowledge it wished we had been on the team from day one.

In the perfect world, our clients would call us at the very beginning of their journey and we would help them establish time lines, ensure alignment between budgets and business needs and manage the design from first principles. You would be amazed at how often this alignment does not happen and huge sums of money get spent on the wrong things or correcting defective design or construction. 3Sixty recently worked with a well-known local client from the outset and in helping to realign their budgets with their business plan, we managed to reduce their capital expenditures by over two-thirds.

Early intervention when building a studio is much more cost effective and could save a lot of time and money in the long run.

Once we have ensured alignment between budgets and business needs, we ensure a detailed project scope is established that all stakeholders agree to and sign up to. At this stage, we can move forward with confidence, procure and manage the design teams to achieve the brief within the budget and time lines.

It’s probably worth noting that studios, data centres and teleports are very complex projects, and must be executed precisely to exacting standards. This takes time. Cutting programmes and setting unrealistic delivery dates is foolhardy and will probably increase the risk of failure both in the short and the long term. Sky News Arabia had challenging, but realistic time frames. All the workstream disciplines were headed up by strategic project managers who proactively managed each workstream and mitigated risk.

What are some of the major challenges you face in such projects?

One major issue with clients is that they hire consultants who have never managed or designed a studio or broadcast facility before. They would never contemplate appointing an inexperienced systems integrator to design and install the broadcast technology, but for some reason, they often appoint architects and engineers to design a studio for the very first time. This is fraught with risk. What seems like a cheaper alternative at the beginning ends up costing much more in the long run.

What can go wrong when building a studio?

We think we have seen it all but we are always surprised. We see studio structures that cannot support lighting grids or even hold antennas steady, satellite platforms referenced to a different north than the norm, horrific operational adjacencies that mean staff have to travel long distances every day just because rooms were designed in the wrong locations. Likewise, we see SI cable runs that are too long and extremely costly due to bad locations of technical rooms. We see air conditioning systems that don’t cool critical areas or cause noise problems in acoustically-sensitive environments. Underestimations of power and cooling requirements are common place, late connections to mains power supplies cause great delays to SI installations and the go-live dates, and unclean earthing puts expensive broadcast technology at risk. I guess the most common issue we face with the services though is a lack of understanding about system resilience and commissioning.

Can you elaborate?

As I mentioned before, an international commercial broadcaster cannot afford to go black on air. Their business and reputation depends upon it. As such, we have to analyse the designs, establish the risk to the business and eliminate these risks. A good example of this is the mains power. Let’s say the main power supply fails.

The electrical installation has to be designed, installed and commissioned to anticipate a failure and protect the business accordingly. Broadcast technology is extremely sensitive equipment that cannot tolerate even the slightest of power outages. Therefore, generators must be installed to maintain mains power but for the time it takes the generators to start, an additional UPS system must be installed to protect the technical installation and keep you on air.

These components will need to be maintained and from time to time, will be off line. As such, you need duplicity in the systems; an A and B feed to provide resilience in case you have a mains failure whilst carrying out, maintenance, on say the A UPS, then the B must still be on line. However, once you resolve the risk of one system failure, you just move it on to the next system down the line. The list goes on and the risk scenarios we run are complex.

Another key word here is commissioning. Many people spend large sums of money on complex installations and trust that they have been installed correctly.

I have been in this game for 26 years and I have never seen a single project installed correctly without rigorous commissioning taking place. Too many people trust that everything will work and only find out when it’s all too late and the systems have fallen over and they’re off air! You can imagine the scenario. The project is late, the pressure is on and everything has to be finished by tomorrow. The first thing that is compromised is the commissioning, which gets squeezed from an eight-week process to a few days.

The project is handed over and the contractor crosses their fingers and hopes the phones don’t ring. This puts businesses and reputations at great risk. A strict system-by-system commissioning culminating in a full systems integration test (SIT) must be undertaken to ensure that all goes well. You will not believe how many things work well in isolation but fall over when they are part of a larger system.

Would you say SNA was a successful build project?

The whole SNA experience has been a real pleasure, being constructed and delivered both on time and, surprisingly, under budget. We were welcomed into the SNA family and the team effort from all individuals on that project was quite extraordinary. These type of projects have to be approached with a team ethos, with the project managers empowered and trusted to make key decisions.

The completed facility, broadcast systems, studio set, launch and ultimately, the pictures we see every day are testament to the efforts and hardwork of Sky News Arabia, twofour54, TSL and the many individuals who worked tirelessly, argued occasionally and delivered exceptionally.