This is a continuation of Part 2 of the three-part series on performing a design survey for an indoor arena.

This will be a short section as it is mostly a checklist of items to keep an eye out for.

The “back of house” areas can get a little fuzzy and the areas needing coverage and expectations for them need to be well-defined by the customer before you leave the site. You need to figure out everywhere they are wanting WLAN access that is not in the bowl or concourse. These areas include:

• Administration offices
• Employee break rooms
• Ticketing/Box offices
• Locker rooms
• Media/Press rooms
• Dressing rooms
• Backstage areas

As you can see, a lot of these are areas where there will be no “general public”. However, the customer will most likely want the public network available and working well. When looking for possible AP locations, you want a placement that maximizes coverage in the rooms needed, but also minimizes bleed-through into the concourse or bowl.

Media and Press rooms are the only ones you can count on heavy usage. They normally have 3+ devices each and expect an absurd level of performance. So make sure you size it correctly.

Another thing to keep an eye out for is everywhere they store ticket scanners. They are normally stored in Box offices and Ticketing offices, but sometimes they are in an Administrative office as well. These areas need access to the ticketing WLAN for testing, updating, or uploading any offline scans. One of the largest complaints I’ve heard from employees that handle ticketing (other than the WiFi not working) is not having the ticketing network available in the back.

Regardless of what is decided during your visit, make sure that you have a list of included and excluded areas in your design document. This is something the customer can become very nit-picky about when it comes time for implementation. Having these exclusions in your design doc in the beginning helps you get the project closed out.

Questions or comments? Leave them below and/or find me on twitter @mattbfrederick