SAP Center- San Jose

The SAP Center, with a seating capacity of 18,000, is a large indoor ice arena and home to the NHL San Jose Sharks.  When the facility shut down in March of 2020 due to the COVID 19 outbreak, The facility management group wanted to take advantage of this very unusual downtime and commissioned B32 Engineering Group, Inc. to design the replacement of the steel header system and rink floor.  Typically the facility is booked solid for 12 months of the year with both NHL on ice events and dry floor events during the off season.

B32 demonstrated to the facility management group that it was more cost effective to replace both the header system and the ice rink floor at the same time vs. just the header system as originally planned. Both systems reached there expected life and had leaks occur in recent years.  The facility could not afford to lose the ice sheet due to failing systems during the NHL hockey season.  The next challenge was to complete the construction in time for the potential restart of the NHL hockey season in December.  The construction of the project took less 11 weeks from demolition to completion of the new floor with more than 3,200 welds made to construct over 10 miles of new steel rink piping in the ice rink floor system.  The project was completed on time and within the limits of the project budget.  The ice quality at the SAP center has never been better.