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March 6, 2013

The Bay Lights Project on San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge – That’s A Lot of Staff to Schedule!

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The Bay Lights Grand Lighting occurred last night on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. This project is the world’s largest LED light sculpture measuring 1.8 miles long and 500 feet high. Illuminating the local community with 25,000 LED lights between nightfall and until 2:00 am every night for the next two years, the Bay Lights Project surpasses the scale of the Eiffel Tower’s 100th Anniversary lighting. As a privately funded gift inspired by the Bay Bridge’s 75th Anniversary, $6 million was raised to date with the goal of $8 million for the Bay Lights Project to stay intact through 2015.

Ben Davis, Board Chair of non-profit Illuminate the Arts, first conceived the Bay Lights Project and invited artist Leo Villareal to be part of it. Not unfamiliar to installing light art pieces in public spaces, the New Yorker combined “technology, art, light in this monumental piece of art” to showcase to Bay Area locals and visitors.

Staff scheduling for the Bay Lights Project

With such a large-scale project, just imagine the amount of planning involved in this stunning light art installation on an iconic San Francisco landmark. There must have been a significant amount of time spent scheduling to accurately configure shift times for all teams or specific departments to meet to bring the Bay Lights Project to life.

The beginning processes of the Bay Lights started in September 2012 where fiber and power lines were installed and 25,000 LEDs and 48,000 bridge clips were in production. In October 2012, electricians worked on installing the LED light system from Monday to Friday, 8 pm to 5 am. It wasn’t until mid-December 2012 when testing of the lights started and the grand lighting three months later. Can you imagine how many people were involved being scheduled to gather materials, properly install it, and to constantly test and tweak it?

The Bay Lights Project involved members from multiple art and technology studios, communication providers, installation crew, traffic control, general safety/labor/electricians, and media/PR. It takes quite a bit of time to schedule every individual from so many different departments and teams. Humanity makes it easy to schedule everyone with our group platform and/or our general account’s multiple location feature. Since a majority of the project members would be working remotely, our GPS location tracker feature for clocking in and out is a perfect tool for keeping track of employee attendance. See more features here.

As San Franciscans, the Humanity management team can’t be any more proud of our city’s Bay Bridge “Bay Lights” Project.