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Engineers go wild for the BBC
Tuesday June 24th 2008. Posted: 09:30
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At the Springwatch location, from left, are Ian Dewar, with Openreach engineers Dave Jeffery, Greg Doy and Rob Wharton, who were also involved in the project, and operations manager Mike Cooper
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When the BBC switched the location of its nightly Springwatch programme from Devon to Norfolk, Openreach engineers were quickly on the scene to sort out the comms for the production crew.
Springwatch, starring Bill Oddie and Kate Humble, is broadcast every night, showing live footage from various wildlife locations, where it explores new animal habitats and meets new animal characters. The venue for the new show is Pensthorpe Nature Reserve near Fakenham. “We weren’t involved in the actual broadcasting, because that’s all done via satellite,” said operations manager Mike Cooper. “We were there to provide lines to various portable buildings, which housed the production crew. They were used for general communications and digital links back to their base.” When the Openreach people first moved in, the only services on site were a pair of lines to the nature reserve’s office, which is very remote from the local exchange. Over the course of five weeks, engineers Kelvin Twite, Martin Johnston and Brian Scott attended at regular intervals to create a new distribution point and then cable from this to the portable buildings. In all, they installed ten phone lines and two ISDN lines. “We had to work closely with the BBC engineers and BBC site director Ian Dewar, because the buildings were arriving piece-meal and it was critical that the lines were installed in the correct locations,” said Mike. “We had to get it right first time. So we had to improvise and be as adaptable as possible. It was a fairly ordinary job for the team, but a lot more interesting than usual because of its connections with the TV programme.” The BBC’s Ian Dewer added: “Without the dedication from the Openreach engineers to give us the services we needed, we would have had big problems. But thanks to their help and knowledge, all the services were installed on schedule. My thanks go to them for their commitment.” This story could win you a prize in our new competition - see Thursday’s page.
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Last updated:
09:55
