Wednesday 18th of March saw the grand opening of the University’s new sports centre, CitySport, with speeches, guided tours and demonstrations from some of the University’s teams. Along with a large delegation of City staff and special guests, we went along to find out more about this fabulous new resource.
The sports centre features some of the most modern fitness equipment on the market, and it’s easy to see how much work has been put in by both the Sports department and PaF. What some may not realise is how much was done by Information Services (IS) in order to help make these new facilities a reality.
In the final months of the CitySport build, a project was run by the Information Services (IS) Specialist Services team to ensure that all of the technical equipment and IT related services CitySport needed, were running and ready for the launch.
A key service to be introduced (in conjunction with the IS Project Management team) was the brand new membership and booking system. This membership tool allows users to register a profile and book activities or classes all from one central system.
Within the first few weeks of being open, more than 17,000 users registered, with more signing up all the time.
The new state-of-the-art running machines also needed specialist support to ensure that the music streaming, video streaming, Freeview TV functions and member profile storage facilities were all available.
In the main sports hall, the team have also installed a high-definition video camera enabling sporting events to be recorded and even streamed live to PCs, mobile devices, or the screen in CityBar.
For more information on CitySport and its facilities please visit the CitySport website here: http://www.citysport.org.uk/.
