Case Studies

Feltech have recently completed a contract to supply Audio Visual facilities to The Wellcome Trust at their New Head Office in London. The contract was awarded to Feltech after a competitive tender put out by the AV consultancy Arup Communications.

The architects vision was to create three large meeting rooms, each of which could be sub-divided to create two smaller meetings rooms. The AV systems where designed so that full functionality was available in both large and small room configurations. AV facilities included video projection from multiple formats, video and audio conferencing, sound reinforcement and a congress type audio system. Arup’s entire system design was worked in with the architectural requirements to hide all the equipment in cupboards or behind wooded panel work. This required some careful equipment selection to cope with off-axis projection through small cut-outs in the panel work. Projection screens were installed behind closing door panels or above the ceiling. Flat panel loudspeakers were set into walls behind slotted wooden facias. The local equipment racks were located in a cupboard some 2.4 meters above floor level.

Due to the access restrictions imposed by the high level equipment racks all user controls where replicated on a wireless touch screen control panel, a lectern mounted control panel and a wall mounted panel that included engineering set up functions.

A central AV control room was installed to house the source devices such as DVD and VHS video players, video and audio conferencing codecs and MPEG decoders. Large matrix switchers for video, audio and data signals where installed to allow complex signal routing and monitoring of the rooms by an AV technician. All the signals between the conference rooms and the control room where required to run over the buildings CAT6 structured cabling system. This required the use of multiple CAT6 transmitters and receivers to handle the considerable number of video, stereo audio and XGA data signals within the system.

Due to the inherent complexity of the AV system a control system was required to allow easy ‘user friendly’ operation of the conference room functions and quick set up and configuration of the rooms buy the technical staff. An AMX system was chosen which required six controllers and a master unit all linked over the buildings IP network. The user interfaces are a combination of 15 touch screens, ranging from 6” wireless units to 15” fixed LCD screens. The touch screens are required to ‘track’ each other so a technician can monitor what a user may be doing. The technician has the ability to allocate resources to any room for a particular session, so the user only has icons on their screen for things that they actually require.

The programming of the control system was obviously going to be the key to the success of the entire installation. It was because of this that Feltech commissioned AMX project services to develop and write the software. AMX brought a wealth of experience and understanding to the project with has lead to the end results surpassing the brief.

As with many new building projects, there were some issues with other contractors works on-site overrunning which impacted on our installation schedule. However with lots of hard work, understanding and diplomacy Feltech were able to delivery the system on budget. We firmly believe that our experience on this project will stand us in good stead to win similar work in the future.

Audio Visual Facilities for The Wellcome Trust