Right from the beginning, Pure AV worked closely with us to identify a suitable solution for our many flexible meeting spaces. While working with ever-evolving requirements, they identified a solution that not only surpassed our needs but also provided reliable, user-friendly experiences through best-in-class technology and service. - Home Group Stakeholder
- Home Group Stakeholder
Home Group is one of the UK’s largest providers of housing, health and care, employing around 3,500 colleagues across England and Scotland. They provide homes for over 115,000 customers across 55,000 properties.
When Home Group made the decision to invest in a new headquarters in the North East of England, it had an ambitious goal in mind - to design a building that promotes collaboration and unity between various locations.
This new hub would serve as a symbol of the organisation's commitment to providing the highest quality care for their clients. It would also be a place for staff to come together, exchange ideas, and spark groundbreaking collaboration.
To ensure the timely and cost-effective completion of the project, Home Group's construction partner collaborated with an AV consultant to select a small group of experienced AV integrators. These integrators not only needed to have close ties to the area but also have a solid track record of confidently delivering complex audio visual solutions.
Following a thorough and competitive tender process, it was evident that Pure AV was the integrator capable to undertake such a substantial task.
From the outset, our team provided transparent advice to Home Group stakeholders regarding a series of challenges that were identified. These challenges included a global shortage of specified hardware, tight project deadlines, and a post-award change to project budgets.
Our team took this as an opportunity, rather than a hurdle. We promptly began to revise and re-design a significant portion of the initial solution to incorporate alternative equipment, resulting in substantial cost savings for the entire project. Despite these changes, the solution remained of the utmost quality and met all necessary requirements.
Keeping all stakeholders involved and informed throughout the process, a revised proposal was presented to the client, accompanied by a comprehensive list of revisions, product information and imagery, CAD drawings, elevations and layouts, schematics and other technical documentation to aid the decision making process and stakeholder's understanding of the systems proposed.
Additionally, to ensure complete confidence, we guaranteed that Home Group had both a dedicated Project Manager and Technical Account Manager available on-site accountable for ensuring complete satisfaction throughout the project.
Impressed by our approach, Home Group were happy to progress with the revised project plan.
Step into this fascinating building and one of the first spaces you'll discover is a versatile open-plan area that's been designed to accommodate a range of meeting styles. From large conferences to smaller ad-hoc sessions, this space offers something for everyone.
At the core of this space sits a Logitech room system for Microsoft Teams to allow complete hybrid functionality. A custom-made lectern has been carefully positioned at the front of the room, with an integrated Logitech Tap meeting controller, ensuring any user can walk into the space and host a conference with ease. In addition, a Logitech Swytch was installed to provide BYOD/BYOM capability for external guest users to connect their own laptop or device, or for using other conferencing platforms such as Zoom.
To create a high-quality visual experience, two 98-inch LG displays have been mounted on height adjustable wall brackets, giving all attendees the best possible viewing angles, no matter where they're sitting.
Regardless of room layout, presenters and delegates are free to position themselves anywhere within the space and move around as desired. Thanks to the four Aver AI Auto-Tracking Cameras and Sennheiser Beamforming Microphones, every possible angle is covered in high-fidelity. This removes any worries about voice pickup or camera coverage and ultimately, adds an extra level of freedom for users of the space.
Home Group required a space that could be divided for different purposes. Our in-house team met this challenge by programming the space to be divisible at the press of a button, with all the associated technology automatically reconfiguring to suit the desired layout and usage. At any time, the user can also manually override the room automation and adjust the AV layouts to create their own bespoke setup for the room and event.
When not hosting conferences, the space is capable of displaying digital signage content through the Tripleplay platform. Additionally, providing background audio across the Dante network creates a welcoming space for staff and visitors.
Ensuring user-friendly, high quality collaboration across our meeting spaces was a crucial requirement for this project. It’s been a pleasure to work with the team at Pure AV to successfully deliver everything we needed. - Home Group Stakeholder
With over 20 meeting spaces on site, our team recognised the importance of delivering a Microsoft Teams enabled solution that provided a simple, friendly platform for all users.
After a series of discussions and demonstrations, Home Group agreed that Neat's offering was the most compelling and provided the most benefit for their requirements. This solution provided a consistent experience, and allowed users to easily join and host Microsoft Teams meetings.
In the small and medium meeting rooms, we installed a series of Neat Boards with integrated cameras and microphones. In larger spaces, attendees can enjoy video collaboration with a Neat Bar Pro with 86-inch LG displays.
All Microsoft Teams meetings can be joined by pressing the Neat Board interface in the small and medium spaces, and the Neat Pad room controller in the larger areas, making the entire process extremely straightforward.
Each meeting space is primarily set up to deliver a native Microsoft Teams experience, however, our team added additional connectivity to enable meetings from other video conferencing providers. Users walk into any of the meeting spaces, connect their laptops to table inputs, and then launch their conferencing software while retaining use of the in-room peripherals.
In order to better complement each meeting space, Pure AV installed Logitech room booking panels outside each room. These panels are linked to the in-room systems and enable users to easily find and book spaces for meetings, making the process more streamlined and efficient.
The Strawberry Fields space is situated on the fifth floor of this impressive building. This large and expansive area is similar to the first floor but is the 'go-to' space for hosting company-wide Town Hall meetings. Employees from all departments gather here, whether in person or remote, to engage in discussions about the company's future plans and strategies.
From a technology perspective, the space is driven by the same ecosystem as the first floor space but is home to a 130-inch Samsung LED display to provide the highest quality images in these important meetings.
When not being used for Town Hall meetings, the space effortlessly transforms into an open plan workspace and casual seating area, with background music and digital signage on-screen to suit. The fifth floor is also home to a Wellness Space and Orangery Room, which have mobile display screens and audio systems capable of presentation content and background music.
AV over IP and Dante play a major role in signal distribution at Home Group's new headquarters, providing unparalleled flexibility. With Wyrestorm's AV over IP solution, visual content can be deployed to almost any screen, while the Dante network allows for deployment of audio to any space.
Background audio is fed from two centralised music players connected to the Dante network, to enable a choice of sound throughout any space in the building. Bluetooth audio wall plates are also available and connected on the Dante network, to facilitate ad-hoc connection of a user's own device for music playback.
The QSC Reflect software allows IT teams to manage and control any device on the network with ease. Important information, such as device status and uptime, can be monitored and issues can be quickly rectified.
Home Group's new headquarters boasts an impressive AV ecosystem that provides unparalleled flexibility and intuitive device management. With meeting spaces and open-plan areas, and networked AV throughout, the technology delivers a consistent experience across the entire site and makes One Strawberry Lane one of the most exciting places to visit.