Minnesota Vikings Look to the Future with New Team Headquarters and Practice Facility

Minnesota Vikings’ TCO Performance Center sports the latest AV, networking and control technology thanks to D-Tools and Electronic Design Company.

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Minnesota Vikings Look to the Future with New Team Headquarters and Practice Facility

Sure, integrating the AV and control system at the Twin Cities Orthopedics Center, the new headquarters for the Minnesota Vikings, was a massive undertaking for Electronic Design Company (EDC), but sales manager Brian Krisko and his team didn’t shy away from it.

“This is a state-of-the-art pro football team headquarters and practice facility,” Krisko says. “We love the opportunity and challenge of a project this size.”

Located in Eagan, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul, the TCO Performance Center brings the Minnesota Vikings practice facilities and corporate offices all under one roof.

It joins U.S. Bank Stadium as examples of blending technology with professional sports.

The project includes networked audio, video and control systems for meeting, training, and conference rooms, lounges, locker rooms, and offices.

Minneapolis-based Electronic Design Company also integrated systems in a 274-seat auditorium, full-size indoor practice facility, and a 6,500-seat outdoor stadium.

The technology systems include 190 AMX devices and more than 300 endpoints, giving users the flexibility to distribute content to wherever it is needed on the campus, including for staff and player meetings.

“The goal was to bring the Minnesota Vikings the latest technology, and to bring the brand under one roof, putting the football and the corporate sides together in keeping with the latest trends in professional football,” says Krisko.

TCO Performance Center

Inside the TCO Performance Center

TCO Performance Center features a meeting room that accommodates Vikings players, coaches and essential personnel along with an adjacent television studio and networked AV throughout the building.

The AV, IT, and control systems across the facility include:

  • AMX encoders and decoders and control panels
  • BSS digital signal processors
  • Crown amplifiers
  • JBL loudspeakers
  • Shure microphones, paired with the D-Tools System Integrator software platform

The Electronic Design Companys team—which includes project manager Chris VanDyke, senior design engineer Doug Melaas and Krisko—attributes the project’s success, in part, to a solid relationship established between the client, the electrical contractor who brought EDC onto the team, and the IT vendor.

“The magnitude of the size of the network and the coordination that needed to happen between the IT vendor and us…was a tremendous feat by our installation team,” says Krisko.

“We went through 34 revisions of different system layouts, pricing structures, and sets of responsibilities between the trades before we were under contract.”

D-Tools Quickens the Process

When EDC started doing the work, the drawings and other documentation were already established, thanks to the D-Tools platform.

D-Tools’ AutoCAD integration was also beneficial during the design phase, because the team could create custom blocks and import the product data from the D-Tools catalog.

Similar rooms, such as the nine conference rooms in the facility, could be built once and then duplicated as separate packages. As the facility began to take shape, the design changed from the original plan based on the customer’s needs.

The capability to produce updated equipment and labor quotes helped streamline the project flow within the agreed upon timeframe.

When a substantial change order came late in the project, Electronic Design Company used D-Tools functionality to select the nine affected rooms, remove unnecessary equipment and associated labor charges, and create a change order for the new gear.

The integrator then produced a report to get the changes approved, so the installation team could work quickly to connect the new components with the technology that had already been installed.

“The change order was instrumental in allowing us to get the customer exactly what they wanted in a very short time frame,” VanDyke says.

Being able to run reports for labor on each type of room helped the EDC team manage overall project deadlines through careful and transparent scheduling.

After the Install

The completion of the TCO Performance Center marked the beginning of a partnership between the Vikings and Electronic Design Company, with Krisko noting, “that relationship continues to grow,” including a service plan for the team and the facility.

“To have everything in a central location, including the equipment lists and warranty information, and then broken up by room type, location, and the different types of systems was a huge help in putting together a service proposal of this size and scope,” Melaas says.

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