Located across 640 acres in Omaha, Nebraska, the Village of Boys Town is one of the largest residential care communities in the United States and serves as the national headquarters of Boys Town, an organization that provides support for at-risk youth and their families. The campus includes a National Research Hospital, school, post office, fire station, café, church, museum, and visitors center, among other facilities. The Village is a National Historic Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Seeking to install fiber optic infrastructure from its existing facilities to each on-campus residence, the Village of Boys Town selected HDR in September 2025 to provide a sole-source engineering solution to deliver the complete high-level design (HLD) and low-level design (LLD) for the Omaha campus network.

Our team began with a listening session to understand the campus’s unique operational requirements. These included taking into consideration school activities and elevated safety concerns. The aspiration for long-term technology goals, including expanding connectivity and setting the stage for advanced security and fire and life safety, was also considered.

From this foundation, we developed the HLD to define the backbone topology, redundancy, and fiber routing strategy, before translating this into a detailed LLD, following a “Dig Once” policy to minimize ground disturbance and the risk to campus network facilities during construction. The design accounts for future expansion, including the planned hospital extension project, which HDR will also be involved in.

In addition to the design, we prepared the construction procurement package, including authoring and posting the RFP for network construction. Following this process, HDR was retained to provide construction management services, securing design intent, quality assurance, and seamless integration of the new network across the active campus.

Further leveraging our expertise, we are in the process of collating the contractor's GPS data into a bespoke geographic information system. This will provide Boys Town with a complete live database that allows for detailed network and infrastructure management.

Scheduled to be completed in early 2026, the network will provide a resilient, secure fiber connectivity designed to support Boys Town’s evolving technology needs, delivered with minimal disruption to daily operations and fully aligned with the organization’s mission and heritage.

HDR’s Tony Taylor, project manager for Boys Town Campus Fiber Network, comments:

“The mission of the Boys Town ecosystem is to serve children that are at a disadvantage. We collaborated closely with the staff to design and install effective network architecture to provide the residents with the connectivity they need to be successful. We are helping these children progress their education and establish their place within the community in a secure digital environment. This project is especially close to my heart, as both Boys Town and HDR are headquartered in Omaha, and both were founded in 1917; it feels as if we have grown up together.”