Spectrum Restack Program wins Project of the Year for BAI

Broadcast Australia, a member of the BAI Group, has been awarded Project of the Year by the Project Management Institute (PMI) Australian Chapters for its successful completion of the Spectrum Restack Program on behalf of the Commonwealth.

Presented in conjunction with the Annual PMI Australia Conference on Monday, the 2015 Project of the Year Award recognises an organisation which has delivered a project with superior performance through the application of outstanding project management principles and has made an important contribution in the business, industry, government, community or not-for-profit environments.

Broadcast Australia was appointed program manager for the Australian Government’s Restack of digital television services in late 2012. In this capacity, it coordinated and managed the restack works for all national and commercial television services to clear the 700 MHz band spectrum following the federal government’s digital dividend auction in May 2013.

Led by a group of individually selected specialists, the Restack project involved changing the frequencies of 1476 national and commercial digital television channels across Australia at 427 transmission sites, resulting in 20.4 million TV viewers being retuned nationally.

The successful conclusion of the Restack supports the government’s vision of freeing up spectrum for mobile devices, delivering greater television services and paving the way for communications technologies such as 4K into the future.

“This was an incredibly complex project which arrived to us with numerous stakeholders and very tight timeframes, but our world-leading engineers met the challenge head on,” said Jim Hassell, Group CEO of BAI.

“I’m extraordinarily proud of our team as it’s not often you can say that you’ve completed a government project of this magnitude both within budget and ahead of the official timeframe.

“Over 346,800 hours (or 192 man-years) went into making this project a success and I would like to congratulate the project team on this award, which is testament to their dedication and hard work.”