Building Newark Liberty Terminal A From the Concrete Slab Up
One of the largest design-build projects in New Jersey history. BlackHawk Data was in the network, voice and cybersecurity design before the first fiber was pulled.
Port Authority of New York & New Jersey · Newark Liberty International Airport, Terminal A
The challenge
Terminal A was a ground-up rebuild and one of the largest design-build projects in New Jersey’s history. BlackHawk Data joined a hand-selected vendor list at a point when only a concrete slab stood where the terminal would be.
As the design expanded to cover every airport subsystem, the security requirement changed character. In a typical enterprise, a network failure costs revenue. Here the terminal carried thousands of HD surveillance cameras, door sensors, air quality monitors, occupancy and intrusion sensors, crowd-shift detection and several classified systems — so the consequence of downtime was public safety, not lost business.
What we did
Being involved from the design stage rather than after it meant the network, voice and cybersecurity systems could be shaped by people who had supported live airport systems before, instead of retrofitted into decisions already made.
The team built for full redundancy, security and scalability across every subsystem, on the assumption that no single component could be allowed to take operations down.
Outcomes
- Design-stage — engaged before the first fiber cable was pulled
- Fully redundant — architecture across all airport subsystems
- Thousands — of cameras, sensors and monitors carried on the network
- Largest in NJ — among the largest design-build projects in state history