While Star Trek episodes and films can take place everywhere in the universe — from Earth to a starship to the surface of a comet and beyond — the actual shooting of the show takes place on three Paramount soundstages and whatever sites are chosen for the rare location shoot. The building of all the various sets called for by the writers and producers requires quite a bit of coordination, hence the need for a construction coordinator. In the case of Enterprise, that job belongs to Thomas J. Arp.

"Basically, what I do is I take the art department's vision and put reality to it," said Arp. "We discuss construction techniques and ways to build things to make it safe and how much it's going to cost. Then I deliver to the producer what this vision of the art department is going to really be in dollars and cents, and once that's all agreed upon, it's my job to manage that money, give the art department what they want and schedule all the different crafts that are involved with the process. It's pretty involved."

Arp is no stranger to Star Trek, having been the construction coordinator on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (beginning with Season 3) and his current assignment on Enterprise. He also served as Construction Coordinator on the films "Star Trek Generations," "Star Trek: First Contact" and "Star Trek: Insurrection."

The process of construction coordination from start to finish begins where most jobs on a television show or film begin: with the script. Arp gets the script, usually around the same time as the art department, and breaks it down, listing all of the sets required. He then meets with the art department, usually the production designer, and they discuss what's going to need to happen scenically to make the script reality.

"A lot of times they'll have the information before I will, just so they can start designing it." said Arp of the art department, "Obviously it makes the process a little bit easier because they have drawings that I can look at and say, 'Okay, you're looking at $20,000 or you're looking at $30,000.' A lot of times we don't have that luxury, so we just kind of talk amongst ourselves and say we're going to put this amount into the budget, and then they start designing and then I'm over their shoulder saying 'Well, if you're going to stick to this (budget) number, maybe we better do this or maybe we better put some more money in.'

"It's just kind of a work in progress until we have the production meeting, and then the producers get to tell us where they want to spend the money, what kind of guidelines and it forms itself into what the episode is going to look like."

But at this stage of the process, Arp's work is just beginning. "Then my major concern is the schedule, because we're bouncing between three stages and I have to schedule my work around what the company is doing. If we have a set that we built for the episode they're shooting on Stage 9 (which is kind of our swing area), and then we have another set that needs to be put in its place, then I look at the schedule and then that determines whether I'm coming in at night, or weekends, or all kinds of weird calls around the company, because the company is the most important thing. They're obviously the ones who are putting the thing on film, so we just kind of work around what their needs are."

Often, due to the tight shooting schedule, set pieces have to be built in Paramount's mill to be moved onto the soundstages later. "We pre-fab all this stuff, and we try to do it in modular sections so we can build it, paint it, and then in as little time as possible on the soundstage, take out whatever was in its place, and then assemble this thing, whatever it is. If it's a space ship or a Victorian house, whatever's called for. That's what's kind of cool about working on Star Trek, the variety of stuff we get to do. It's never boring. You can be working on this cool thing, futuristic part of a space ship, then the next episode calls for a contemporary house. You get to build a lot of cool stuff."

With so many sets being built and struck so quickly, Arp has to not only coordinate the creation of the sets, but also what happens to them after the episode has wrapped.

"That's a main part of my job. Say we build a set, like the comet [from the Enterprise episode "Breaking the Ice"] and obviously the comet was a set that we can't keep the whole thing, it's so big and it's kind of built into place. So I deal with the art department and the producer and say, 'What do we need to hang on to?'"

Often scenery is going to be needed for re-shoots, inserts or second unit shooting, so completely destroying an entire set after shooting is shortsighted. Thus, while whole sets such as the comet landscape can't be entirely saved, crucial pieces get saved.

"What we ended up saving out of that set was those mushroom-looking rocks. We loaded those up, then we transported them out to Burbank where we have a warehouse."

Lots of scenery on Star Trek is cleverly repurposed from other sets. "We just try and take scenic pieces that we're going to re-use into new sets we can change a little bit. Then if there's a set that is in permanent rotation, like our Armory set, that comes in and out, because that [soundstage] space can be reused for a new set. So we take those elements out, then we'll ship them out to the warehouse and when the script calls for it, we'll ship them back and we'll put the whole thing back together. A lot of people touch these pieces from start to finish. From taking [sets] apart, to transporting it, to bringing it back to fixing it to putting it back together."

There's also a big difference between building the original sets for the pilot than for individual episodes. Obviously, the sets for the Bridge, Sickbay, Engineering, etc., are built to last, since they'll be appearing again and again on the show.

"On the pilot, in construction, we had 130-150 people working with us. But when you go to episodic it ranges from 20-25. Sometimes we have 50, depending on what the workload is. We try to keep a core of 25 people who work in different crafts for us, not all propmakers or laborers or painters, just a few of each. They know the sets, they know the show and that way, when we do get a lot of work, I can take and splinter those people off and put new people in and you kind of get the same, I don't want to say architecture, but it's the same Star Trek look.

"That's a big part of it, on a show like this, where you think it might go for a long time. You build it so that it comes apart and goes back together a lot. This particular pilot was like a feature; they had like 38 sets. We were out in Bakersfield, we were down in Redondo and El Segundo, so there was a lot of construction, plus building the permanent sets from scratch. It was very involved."

Not only is there a significant difference in the budget between pilot and individual episode, but also a big difference on the schedule. "On a pilot, you always have two-to-three months to do this, but episodically you only have seven-to-ten days."

Arp's work covers all the scenic aspects of the show, but he also must coordinate this work with the various other departments that work on the show. "The computer stuff is the graphics department. But say there's a computer screen that goes in a wall, then I have to coordinate with them. They get me what the size is and their needs and we custom build these units to fit whatever their components are that are going to go in there. Lighting — we interact with them a lot — they tell us what they need, and then we accommodate them so everything kind of works. We pretty much interact with a lot of different crafts to get the scenery to the point of where you can put a camera and actors there and shoot it."

On Enterprise, unlike previous Star Trek shows or films where monitors on a starship or a space station needed special effects to appear working, the monitors on the set are practical. "It's really weird, because when I first started on Deep Space Nine the plasma screens were in development, none of us had even seen them. So we used to build thick pieces of plexiglass and we would do burn-ins, stuff like that. Then if we had a monitor, we had to build it into the wall, because the monitor was so big. Now, it's funny because the technology has caught up with us. Now we've got these cool little flat screens, which you can just mount on a wall. Working on Star Trek, you feel good about it because a lot of times the stuff comes full circle. Like the computer screens.

"The show is just very cool. As I said before, we get the opportunity to build what the future is supposed to look like — Herman Zimmerman's (production designer) vision — and we put it into reality. That goes on the screen, and maybe some inventor or someone will look at this, and later on down the line it becomes reality."

Thus, Arp's job begins when he gets the script and is only finished when the set is either stored away for future use or struck, never to be seen again, all the while coordinating the next episode, and the next ... Arp however, wouldn't have it any other way.

"I think that Star Trek is probably the best job in Hollywood. We have good producers that worry about people's feelings and when you have that, it makes it so much easier to come to work and try and do a good job. That's really the way I think it is, at least on my crew from top to bottom. Everybody's just glad to be here because, to me, it's the best show in Hollywood."