Soldier Field, Chicago’s premier event venue, hosts over 200 public and private events annually. The stadium is owned by the Chicago Park District and managed by ASM Global (formerly SMG), the world leader in venue management, marketing, and development.

Soldier Field and the Chicago Park District were awarded LEED-EB certification for an existing building from the U.S. Green Building Council. The stadium was the first North American stadium and first NFL stadium to earn the prestigious award.

Working together, Soldier Field, SMG, and the Chicago Park District implemented energy conservation and recycling programs along with the use of green cleaning chemicals and the reuse of construction materials at the stadium. In the press release about the LEED certification, Chicago Park District General Superintendent Mike Kelly says, “It is the responsibility of the Soldier Field family and its patrons to decrease the impact of the stadium on its environment whenever possible.”

As one of the greenest stadiums in the world, Soldier Field wanted a centralized solution that eliminated ongoing labor costs associated with turning devices on and off in the field’s 133 luxury suites while continuing to save energy.

Each suite has multiple TVs and a refrigerator that stadium electricians manually turned on and off before and after each event. In addition, security personnel were frequently dispatched to individual suites during evening concert events to turn distracting TVs off.

Soldier Field chose BERT as their plug load control vendor. All TVs and refrigerators were plugged into a Bert, which was plugged back into the existing outlet. The Berts use the existing Wi-Fi network to communicate with the BERT software application in the facilities office at the stadium. Instead of making multiple trips to and from each suite for each event, stadium facilities staff now remotely control the devices from their office. TVs and refrigerators are powered on before the first fans arrive and powered down when the fans go home. BERT’s flexible scheduling system allows TVs to be scheduled separately to make sure they are on for sporting events but off for nighttime concerts.

Implementing the BERT system allowed Soldier Field to save $24,000 a year in labor costs.