How to make a meeting room space more flexible

or Who needs audio visual

installation?

The Brief

We were asked by a leading financial services company to make their space more flexible by incorporating a large hallway into the meeting room space. The original specification had four separate meeting rooms and the brief required the space to be configured in a variety of ways.

Challenges

We were required to design a flexible audio visual solution that can be used with partition walls instead of fixed walls. The space was designed so that nine different room configurations all with AV were available.

The AV would allow individual presentations in single rooms or multiple screens showing the same presentation in larger room mode.

The timescale from start of the AV install to finish was four weeks and this included building work, electrics, aircon, new partition walls, AV and finishing.

Challenges

The job was classified as a building site and power for AV was not available until the last two weeks.

There was no ceiling in place until the last ten days which meant working in a less safe environment and ceiling speakers could only be installed when the grid was back in place.

The ceiling grid position was moved which meant we had to work around the aircon.

Part of the brief was to use some of the existing AV equipment which had to be re-positioned.

Solution

80” LED screens were installed in each room, plus one existing screen and three support screens.Existing AV was removed and we re-cabled with CAT 6, inputs were one VGA with audio and one HDMI with output to HDMI balun extenders to allow for future proofing of the system.At the heart of the video distribution is a 16 x 8 Matrix switcher which allows any of the 16 input sources to go to 8 outputs or multiples.

SolutionThe concept was to create a very ‘SIMPLE’ system which is controlled by licenced software on an IPad. When a room is booked, there is an option on screen of using available floor plates and inputs. Each room is also equipped with a lapel mike and the latest Sennheiser Speechline microphone with auto frequency tuning and auto adjustment of volume levels. In the larger meeting rooms, motorised speakers are lowered into position to minimise any feedback.

Outcome

The job was delivered on time, to the agreed specification, within budget and the client described the work as excellent.