Multimedia Projects
OSI provides multimedia expertise for projects across the UK and internationally
Case study – International Financial Organisation
This extensive and prestigious project serves the needs of over 5,400 members of staff and provides 770,000 square feet of accommodation over 13 floors. The building represents the single largest concentration of traders with the City of London and is the single largest building ever let in Central London. The project is the centrepiece of the estate consolidation project, allowing the client to bring teams together from several other buildings. The building will be the client’s London home for at least 25 years. Mark Johnson was awarded the role of Multimedia Consultant on the project.
The project comprises:
- 166 general meeting rooms
- 34 video conference rooms
- 50 Skype for Business (SfB) meeting rooms
- 253 seat auditorium, with dedicated control room and projection room
- Multi-function event space
- 2 no. Divisible conferencing/collaboration rooms
- Boardroom
- 3 Broadcast TV studios
- Remote monitoring and Control Room (RMC)
- 30 Person Executive Dining Room
- Executive dining and meeting rooms
- Health suite comprising gym, fitness studios, reception and changing rooms
- 6 trading floors
- Staff restaurant
- Lift lobby and open plan areas
- Custom room booking system integrating with the company’s global room booking system
- HD IPTV and Video on Demand (VoD) system
- Extensive digital signage deployment
- Building wide remote control and management platform
Highlights
The project is the largest corporate AV scheme in recent years. The audio visual system design is both extensive and innovative. The scheme provides the client with consistent and seamless integration of control, signal distribution, asset management and room scheduling. The high quality of the rooms and build skill required tested the AV integrator’s delivery skills throughout. The project achieved BREEAM Excellent overall, with the AV systems playing a contributing factor through intelligent energy management across the AV estate, linking room power use to room bookings. The overall build programme of 16 months was fully tested and utilized due to the hugely high level of architectural and joinery detailing.
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Meeting the brief
The client’s brief for the meeting spaces was actually relatively clear and simple. The core objectives were:
3D and BIM
The whole project was created using a 3D Revit model, inherited from the base-build team. The fit-out team worked extensively with this model and ultimately provided the client with a powerful tool to assist with the operation and maintenance of the building. During the construction phase, the model was extremely useful for detecting clashes and resolving construction coordination.
Enterprise level platform
The client required an enterprise level platform to provide the reliability and efficiency demanded, not only by directors and executives but all tiers of management using the facilities. The design delivered the largest corporate TV project in the UK and met the client’s expectations and demands for building wide A/V solutions that are easy to use and support.
Product demonstrations, workshops and proof of concepts were arranged from the start and throughout the pre-production process. These played an important role in determining the final products and design chosen for integration. A full evaluation of control switching and solutions was undertaken by the client and consultant. It was imperative that the design provided seamless integration of control, signal distribution, asset management and room scheduling.
Graphical user interface development workshops played a crucial role in simplifying what is a powerful infrastructure, built around integrated services. These workshops resulting in control panel designs which enabled the users to confidently and intuitively operate the touch panels with minimal training. A considerable amount of time and effort was invested in the graphic design of templates and layouts to maintain a consistent interface. These were rigorously tried and tested with the client during staged witness tests to achieve these highly user-friendly interfaces. The designs were sufficiently successful to be adopted and deployed on a global basis.
Technical innovation
The project features some significant technical innovations. Perhaps the most important is the extensive use of automatic input switching to drive the systems, meaning that users only rarely need to touch the in-room controllers. The auto-switching works so well that the rooms are
genuinely plug-and-play, with most users not even being aware of the intelligence of the systems making this possible.
Service and support were considered from the outset. With a building of this size, sending technicians to rooms was simply not going to be good enough to provide the level of service required, so a Remote Media Control Room (RMC) was devised and designed as the hub of the support operation. The room designs include several important features to make them easy to support and manage from the RMC. Remote power switching ensures that devices can be rebooted, whilst the entire system constantly reports its operational status and health to the management system. In-room cameras allow the technicians to see what’s actually happening on the screens whilst they support the users from mimic panels in the RMC.
The level of sophistication and refinement in the design is quite extraordinary. Extensive use of auto-signal detection to automate the operation of most rooms results in extremely high levels of user satisfaction. The remote support platform is also very helpful for users – providing a SIP intercom for instant personal contact with the RMC and IP spotter cameras and full remote control of rooms. The automation works so well that most users never even use the touch panel.
The excellent new TV studio facility has also allowed them to re-establish their media profile and make them a regular contributor and commentator on financial TV channels such as CNBC. Uncompromised audio quality is also a key feature throughout, with all rooms being excellently reviewed and praised for making audio and video conferences effortless due to freedom from listener fatigue.
It’s a smart building
In order to create a truly Smart building, several useful features have been provided by linking the AV estate to the Building Management System (BMS) and enterprise-wide room booking systems. These provide tangible benefits to both end users and the building managers:
- HVAC control – Heating/cooling can be controlled in accordance with actual room bookings allowing significant energy saving to be achieved. The system knows how long it takes to heat or cool a room to the correct temperature and switches accordingly.
- Power management – In conjunction with the room booking system, rooms can be powered up in time for meetings and automatically powered down at any preferred point – either the end of the meeting or at the end of the day. Very significant energy savings are achieved as this creates a virtuous cycle as less room cooling is required.
- Blinds/ curtains and lighting presets are all recalled via the BMS interface. The bi-directional interfaces ensure that settings on wall plates always stay in sync with the touch panel settings.
- Room temperature readings and settings can be provided on the touch panels for end users.
- The energy management functions provide a real help with BREEAM accreditation, allowing the building to achieve an excellent rating.
- The BMS control servers reside in a secure compartment within the IT infrastructure called the “INS network” which serves all building management functions; whilst the AV infrastructure is all on the business “Production” network. We had to devise a clever mechanism using BACnet over IP to create a secure connection between the two networks. Failover resilience was provided.
Client testimonial
“The audio-visual installation showcases the highest level of AV design standards, control systems and presentation facilities current deployed in the corporate sector. The project has been a long time in the making and the end result is very rewarding. We are already realizing the great benefits that these solutions were designed to provide our clients and staff alike and the installation has progressed very well”.
“We are very privileged to have such a vast range of the latest technology in these unrivalled presentation facilities, where collaboration was the main driver, that now allow us to be more efficient and productive as an organisation. From the outset, it was always going to be about how we turned a complex infrastructure into a series for fully integrated easy-to-use solutions that could empower our staff throughout the building”.
“The control systems and enterprise management platform have played a key role in the success of this project. After our initial review of suitable technologies in the control and automation arena, it was clear that Crestron products and solutions we the right choice for this project”.
“The touch panel interfaces are extremely user-friendly and intuitive and give staff the required confidence to host and deliver successful presentations internally and also to our clients from around the world. These high-performance systems and collaboration environments will enhance our company image and further support our reputation as a leader in the industry”.
“All of our rooms are managed and monitored by a remote management and support platform which gives us the ability to monitor and run diagnostics on all our connected end-points. This has made our support mechanism so much more efficient and pro-active. Technicians now have the resources to make sure that there is minimal down-time across the AV estate, but also to respond more quickly to support calls and help tickets”.