As part of its Darling Harbour Live initiative the New South Wales (NSW) Government revitalized Sydney’s entertainment and exhibition precinct, the Darling Harbour Exhibition and Convention centre. As well as rebuilding the existing exhibition and convention facilities the project also encompassed construction of a new theatre and a 35-storey hotel.

The government needed a fiber optic network infrastructure that could be installed and implemented with speed. It also had to be future proofed, providing a scaleable path for both current and future network needs. This project provided the ideal opportunity and platform for collaboration and innovation.

Optical Solutions Australia (OSA) partnered with SFJV (Stowe/Fredon Joint Venture), EXFO and CommScope to supply the copper cabling, cabinets and digital fibre backbone for this project, as well as network testing with the on-site installation technicians.

“This project certainly had a lot of challenging in scope requirements that could be easily be misinterpreted. We’d worked with Dennis Zilic and the team at OSA before so we knew they had the necessary skills to understand the brief, resolve any problems that might occur, and to always supply the right resources for the job.”

“OSA’s ability to always deliver on time was really crucial to the success of this job. They provided consistency throughout the entire project and quickly come up with alternative solutions if something didn’t work.”

The network needed to be designed to support a wide range of services, from audiovisual to building management to typical Ethernet protocols, which is why the design was always based around supporting a minimum of 10G BASE-LR for the fiber network.

“OSA’s testing was another crucial aspect of this project’s success. Dennis provided the test tools and issued the certificates. OSA also provided product training on the test equipment used for the fibre optic and the copper cabling, and OSA tested the network with the onsite technicians.”

OSA in collaboration with CommScope used EXFO’s optical loss test set (OLTS), optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) and fully automated fiber inspection probes (FIPs) to address the particular network testing challenges of this job.

Thanks to the easy-to-use, high-quality and robust testing solutions, the project was delivered on time and on budget.