Recorded on August 4, 2026
This week’s AV Life heats up as storms continue to wreak havoc on life and projects across the nation. Tim Van Woeart, Murphy Daley, Renee Benson, Brandy Johnson, James King, and guest Steve Borho discuss the pressures of late-summer AV work in higher education. Murphy shares a project-management reminder: focus on what the project truly needs, especially during tense, high-emotion situations. The group explores extreme heat, severe storms, HVAC challenges during classroom installations, and the need for strong coordination among AV, IT, facilities, and campus leadership before planned power outages. They also discuss backup cooling and monitoring needs in medical-school spaces. The conversation later turns to youth sports, artificial turf, player safety, coaching, officiating, and the importance of making sports accessible and visible to young people.
Topics Discussed:
- A project-management approach centered on the project’s real needs
- Managing difficult customer expectations during project issues
- Minimum viable classroom functionality for semester openings
- Late-summer AV installations and orientation deadlines
- HVAC reliability in classrooms during installation work
- Coordination between AV, IT, facilities, and administration
- Planning for building power outages and recovery time
- Backup cooling and supervision for critical medical-school spaces
- Extreme heat, storms, tornadoes, flooding, and water restrictions
- Artificial turf, field conditions, and athlete injury concerns
- Youth sports visibility, affordability, and coaching development
- Referee conduct, parent behavior, and player safety
The AV Life is a Higher Ed AV Media production. More at higheredav.com.
