Immediate Release

Nov 07

City University London choose TeamMate for strategic AV upgrade

City University London was founded in 1894 as the Northampton Institute and awarded full university status in 1966. Based in the heart of London, close to the city of London, the university significantly contributes to the capital's academic, cultural and business life. With more than one hundred years' learning and teaching experience, the university is internationally renowned with providing facilities for 24,000 students from 157 countries.

The University had recognised that existing audio visual equipment had been acquired on an ad-hoc basis by a previous administration, and that there was limited information with regard to the actual AV in each room and its state of operation at the Northampton Square Campus. Having been introduced to the recent AV installations over at the CASS Business School, TeamMate where asked to put proposals forward with regard to providing a campus with a wide standard solution. In advance of these consultations TeamMate provided a total campus wide AV audit, documenting current AV facilities and a health check report. This information was in turn provided to the University showing the potential scope of the solution required in conjunction with existing AV resources.

TeamMate then engaged in providing a set of solutions seeking to capture the current needs at City taking into account future expandability and product upgrade paths. The rooms where broken down into three distinct categories, and also includes two flagship lecture theatres. Each TeamMate provided a common delivery platform seeking to utilise similar AV components across the installation. These include Crestron touch panels and control processor, Smart Sympodium LCD displays, and Elmo P30 visualisers. A network PC was also designed into the system so that each room will have local IT resource, and ready for advance network monitoring with AV asset management to be implemented at a future date.

A pilot system was set up in advance of the main roll out in one of the teaching rooms. This served as an opportunity to invite as many potential users to experience the TeamMate system in a live teaching or presentation environment. Academics and non-technical people had a chance to see and experience at first hand what to expect from the potential new AV set up. A simple feedback mechanism was put in place so that all the thoughts and concerns could be captured and presented to TeamMate at a review meeting. The information proved to be essential moving forward allowing the university to make minor changes and modifications to the brief, and furthermore between TeamMate and the university an agreed user interface could be put in place which would become common place across the campus with a standard familiar approach.

The actual AV contract was awarded to Reflex, an SUPC and LUPC AV supplier. Working in partnership with Reflex, TeamMate and the university where now in a position to roadmap and plan out the project together. One of the key issues that needed to be addressed urgently was how each TeamMate would be manufactured, fully integrated, and placed on site as a fully working unit, within an almost impossible timescale and with the university almost fully operational during the summer period. The contract was published during early June 2007, and the project had to be signed off by the end of August 2007. This amounted to a complete implementation period of just under three months.

A total of 85 rooms formed the overall refurbishment plan. AV was provided by a TeamMate in every room. 20 TeamMate Trainers in smaller rooms, 63 Tutors for the medium and larger rooms, with 2 Podiums for the Oliver Thompson, and Great Hall areas respectively. TeamMate took responsibility for the manufacture of each unit, systems design, programming and factory integration of each TeamMate system, which was carried out at their Oxfordshire facility. This allowed Reflex to focus on the on-site installation, project management and client relationship issues.

From the outset this project was asking the impossible from both manufacturers and suppliers. The project sign off date, availability of AV hardware, and working with the university scheduling was fast proving that if it wasn't for the TeamMate approach there would be no way that each room would be fully operational by the required timeline. Jeremy Stewart of TeamMate remembers "Both City University and ourselves always knew that we had a challenge on our hands. I made a commitment to City that if they go the TeamMate route we will meet the agreed project timeline, without exception". Stewart goes on to recall, "Being able to work with City from the outset of the project allowed us to put pivotal planning and systems in place so that we knew once the order was placed it would be all systems go at our end. We have the space and resource at our facility to handle this size of project and help our reseller partners to concentrate on their own service delivery."

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