OmniCourt update

We had our first subcommittee meeting on resurfacing omnicourts 1-4 on 28th May.

I prepared some background information for the committee :

History

•8 PSC grass Courts were converted to “omni” more than 20 years ago , and they last approximately 7 years
•Omnicourt is a brand name for Sports Technology International, which seems to have lost popularity
•Last resurfacing was done when I was around in 2001 and the material used was “Wimbledon Unreal Grass”
•Wimbledon is a brand name for Grassman Australia
•Grassman is probably the biggest and most popular seller world wide and is installed in Lleyton Hewett and Serena Williams homes
•Previous resurfacing was done by Tennis Court Builders (M) and they represent Grassman here in Malaysia

Alternatives

•Wimbledon Unreal Grass is a 19 mm Polypropylene carpet, in-filled with fine sand
•Initial enquiry to Tennis Court Builders indicated a significant price increase from 45K per court to almost 75K (and a change to Grassman Top Flight 19 product) , hence the 300K request at the AGM
•Competitor from New Zealand (Tiger Turf) has very similar/identical product at much lower cost per court represented by Olympic Venture here in Malaysia
•Some carpets are also being manufactured by vendors in China now, but quality is suspect
•Some vendors are also promoting alternative materials such as Polyethylene.
•Most major vendors have adopted “integrated lines” to improve wear performance

Polypropylene vs Polyethylene

•Existing is polypro (wimbledon unreal grass )
•Polypropylene has highest UV resistance
•Polypropylene has better resistance to stress breaking (often used as plastic hinges)
•Polyethylene feels nice, because it has very low surface friction
•Many hockey pitches are switching from PP to PE, because they like the way they can slide with little or no watering

Conclusions

•I feel that it would be unwise to change from a known good surface (Polypropylene) to an unknown untested surface (Polyethylene)
•China vendors are unacceptable.
•While we have good previous experience with tennis court builders, the cost is too high and we must seriously consider alternative
•Specifications appear identical (we have received side-by-side specs and they appear almost identical in all respects), so we can request for fresh quotes from these two vendors.
•We’ll specify that the vendors must include sending a factory rep from overseas to supervise installation (as was the case back in 2001)
•Also I recommend we replace all the net posts and do so in such a way that they are installed in sleeves in the ground, so that the posts become replaceable in the event of damage or crank malfunction.

The committee agreed with these recommendations and we are in process of requesting a fresh round of quotes to select the vendor (note that in this blog, i have removed competitor's pricing information until the second round of quotes is complete, since we want to keep the bidding process honest)