Creating a Productive Workplace: Making the most of AV
There are a number of factors that drive productivity, and the building blocks of improving it start with the physical space.
Businesses have been responding to the changes post-pandemic, but often this is still making adaptations to what exists.
Designing a productive workplace, with the right technology included in the right way from the design phase, is an important part of creating a high-performance culture and a workplace that is a positive hub of collaboration.
This round table, in partnership with Universal AV, brought together 14 experts and leaders from across the property sector to discuss the changing trends and challenges in creating the productive workplaces of the future.
In this features (part one of two) we focus specifically on the challenges surrounding AV.
Shelley Townend is the Marketing Manager for Universal AV and she kicked things off by outlining how her company works, how it can help and why it’s important AV is brought into the development process as early as possible.
She said: “The pandemic hit and it really changed everything for us because everyone realised actually a team’s call sometimes, rather than driving for four hours to have a 30-minute meeting, works better. What we’re trying get across to people, though, is your screens and general AV kit still has got to be fit for purpose. We have had clients that have done the AV themselves and then don’t fully understand all the issues that can arise from that.
Shelley Townend, Marketing Manager, Universal AV
“So it’s been how we educate people to that, but not just that, how we get involved earlier on in the process. So that when we come into a space, we’re not potentially having to channel into walls again for wires, because we don’t like to leave wires dangling. We’re very neat and tidy in what we do. So we like to come in as early as we possibly can to try and help guide that process and ultimately take the weight off your shoulders.”
Leanne Wookey, who is interiors director for tp Bennett, was completely on-board with the growing importance of AV in terms of making office space as attractive as possible to potential tenants.
“I think AV is a really, really important one. As soon as we came out of lockdown, the reliance now on AV and technology, in its very essence, is absolutely key. We always try and request at stage two, that we’ve got an AV consultant, no different than you would have an acoustics consultant or a structural or your MEP, because as far as we’re concerned, it’s not about just putting that screen in afterwards.
“It’s ‘what’s the infrastructure that goes into that?’ The actual placement of the speakers in the room and where the microphones are. Then it’s the full coordination and, from my point of view, an AV consultant is as crucial to the design team as MEP, the architect and the acoustician. It’s all valid.”
Eamon Fox, who is a partner at Knight Frank (real estate consultancy/estate agents), explained how long-term AV requirements would be shaped by the workforce of the future.
“So academic institutions lead the way. They’re educating their future workforce. We have a cohort of young, wise individuals who we’re all trying to recruit to grow our businesses and they’ve just spent the last four or five years having largely been taught remotely.
“So I guess there’s a mindset that if you want to see the office of the future, go and stand in the universities today and that’s linked to AV. It’s linked to work and work settings. It’s linked to just the whole experience from the front door in.”
The panellists
- Nick Fitzpatrick, Director, Universal AV
- Shelley Townend, Marketing Manager, Universal AV
- Colin Briggs-Campbell, Director, Bowman Riley architects
- Richard Liddle, Senior Interior Designer, Corstorphine & Wright
- Amanda Cook, Founder, Design Tonic
- Paul Fox, Director, Fox Lloyd Jones
- Eamon Fox, Partner, Knight Frank
- Steve Dobson, Workplace Consultant, Overbury
- Christophe Demoulin, Contracts Manager, Pullans
- Carl Braim, Group Director, The Harris Partnership
- Leanne Wookey, Interiors Director, TP Bennett
- Dan Platt, CEO Ultimate Commercial Interiors
- Tom Almas, Founder & Managing Director, Wizu Workspace
- Sue Sparling, Director, DLA Architecture
Shelley Townend added: “What’s interesting is when you poll students now, and you talk to them about what type of education they want, they all want an in-person, feet-on-the-ground, bum-in-a-chair, in-a-lecture-theatre education. They want an old school education because they see that as being value for money for what they’re paying. They don’t want to be taught online. They want to be able to have access to their lecturers.”
Amanda Cook is at the sharp end of creating the perfect working environment. She runs interior design company Design Tonic and admitted, as far as AV is concerned, the process of incorporating it properly is often disjointed.
She said: “To be honest, it can be a problem. We work with companies who will frequently say, when asked about AV, ‘we’ve got a company that deals with that’, and you ask for the interface, and time ticks on, and then it’s a different budget pot most likely to the fit out. So the two actually take a while, and then when you get there, you’ve lost the formation of how that works. And often the AV partner is coming late in the process. Then the acoustics in the room might not be right because we’ve not worked together.
“So I think for me it’s finding a partnership where we can bring in a company like Universal because we just find it’s a real struggle to get the two to marry. We’ve had frequent installations where the AV company’s put extra holes in walls.”
Dan Platt, CEO of Ultimate Commercial Interiors, also believes that there is a massive AV knowledge gap in the industry.
He said: “Invariably business owners, or someone else responsible, don’t know what’s available on the market in that given moment. So they might be relocating and refurbishing, but they’re only aware of what they’ve bought over the last couple of years, and they’ve not really researched the market. So it’s how you get the education into the IT department.
“We’re told by partners that ‘we will buy the screens’ because they’ll just go on the high street or online and they’ll cobble something together and then we’re like, ‘Well, what do you want?’ ‘Where’s it going?’ And it is always an afterthought plus it’s out of another budget. It’s a bit like furniture and we’ll work out how that budget fits in the budget and then AV almost comes after all that.”
Steve Dobson, who is a workplace consultant for Overbury, also highlighted how a lack of knowhow creates issues and that it wasn’t just AV consultants battling to play their part earlier in the process.
“We’re talking to clients that are not educated in AV, I think that’s a given. But they’re also not educated in acoustics, DDA requirements, health and safety requirements, building regs, design principles etc.
“We do a lot of talking to clients that are very green in terms of their knowledge about this process. Now, we can all sit here and talk about the things we know about, but that client essentially knows very little so everyone is fighting to be heard.
“We’ve got furniture guys saying we need to talk to a client first because they say furniture… that’s their first interaction in the workplace. That’s important. Of course AV is important, because we need that to fit in. Everybody wants to be as early as possible in the process but it’s not as easy as that.”
Carl Braim, Group Director of architects The Harris Partnership, believes that the historical placing of AV underneath the IT budget is also unhelpful.
“The other perception is it’s part of the IT budget and not the design budget, and that’s where the education comes in. Historically AV has always fallen into the package of MEP (mechanical, electrical and plumbing). That’s half the reason why it’s been pushed down the line, probably a little bit too much. So I suppose it’s up to the delivery guys to inform and educate the clients re bringing in the AV earlier so it is part of the design package.”
Richard Liddle is a Senior Interior Designer at Corstorphine & Wright (Leeds), highlighted the difference between the public and private sector in respect of how they go about tackling AV.
“My background is in the private sector but when I went and worked for the public sector… now they do a lot of things wrong but that’s one thing they do right. Because, right from the start, they have the furniture, the MEP and the IT and all these packages, and they all feed in right at the beginning.”
Colin Briggs, Director at Bowman Riley architects raised the practical implications of replacing or installing a building’s worth of AV kit in one go.
“So just thinking about our own workplace… if it’s all the same tech from day one – and it’s compatible, which is all lovely, and sounds great – isn’t it going to fail at the same time in 5-10 years? Then there’s a huge capital investment to replace everything which, which might be fine, but in our workplace we try and stagger the investment. If all of this stuff’s done on day one, and it’s all shiny and brand new, you’re planning for a day when it all needs replacing.”
Tom Almas, Founder and Managing Director of flexible workspace providers Wizu Workspace, explained that in his marketplace, which is generally catering for the needs of smaller businesses, AV was not top of the list of priorities.
He said: “We have a fairly generic AV offering in our meeting rooms. I mean, it’s interesting. This feels like something that we need to think about but I would not put AV in the same category as IT for us.
“People will work in our space if there isn’t water and they will work in the space if there isn’t light. However they will not work in the space if there isn’t the right IT. I would not put AV in that category at the moment, but I do realise there might be an opportunity there for us to differentiate because our competition now is anywhere that’s doing space… universities, Starbucks, hotels, pubs etc and we need to find ways to be smarter around how we use this opportunity.”
Christophe Demoulin, Contracts Manager at property management specialists Pullans, added: “It’s interesting that you should say relatively run-of-the mill AV, because that’s very much our experience in the couple of buildings where we have communal facilities. On one occasion we actually bought a very large commercial television and that gets used on occasions. And in hindsight, we probably spent more than we needed to, because it’s not on all day. And most of our attendants who install AV facilities within their spaces… they tend to go to Curry’s and get that £400 TV. And if it fails in couple years, they’ll just buy another and then another and then another, because it appears to be the better financial decision for the person that is responsible for the finances at that time.
“We’ve just done the biggest letting in Leeds so far this year in Joseph’s Well for the NHS. They’ve taken on the fit-out that was originally done for them in 2017/18, and they’ve literally just adopted all of the TVs on the wall, and these are like Blaupunkt TVs from Tesco. They’re more than happy to adopt those TVs and then to retrofit a camera or a speaker that will sit somewhere on the table.
“But they’re happy enough with those TVs because it seems that most people actually want to have their private space where they can have a one-to-one video conference in, say, a working booth or something like that. That seems incredibly popular. We’ve fitted a couple of those recently in Joseph’s Well and they’re busy all day long, whereas the big meetings with the big screens and everything else, they’re in use every few days.”
Sue Sparling, a Director at DLA Architecture, highlighted the remorseless speed of technological development and how the demands of AI were certain to dominate the thoughts of the business community.
“We do find, in presenting to prospective tenants, a lot of their comments or their need to move is about their teams and their staff and the longevity of the business. How AV interacts with that….obviously, they have an element of control over but I do wonder how workspaces will continue to evolve because we can think how it will evolve but how accurately can we do that?
“And the word on everybody’s lips at the moment is AI. That’s all I hear in the office all the time. And just think how that’s progressed in the last six months even and how that then will change how we actually work overall.”
Paul Fox, a director at chartered surveyors Fox Lloyd Jones, was interested to know whether AV was part of an Category A plus requirement fit-out.
“One thing we’re seeing, working with the landlords, is they are now learning from this education of what tenants want. Landlords are now starting to deliver a Cat A Plus which is taking it beyond the empty shell and including big desks so its all-but ready to move into. When you do a Cat A Plus, do you go as far as AV?
Amanda Cook replied with: “I hate saying the b word but it always comes down to budget. We find that it’s the one element that would probably get cut over a nice chair. It’s a difficult one to get right. And how do you a Cat A Plus, particularly, when you don’t know who’s going in?
Fox added: “It’s watching what tenants are doing. And you’re learning from that, and you’re delivering that. Effectively second guessing, whereas previously, we didn’t have the confidence to second guess what an occupier wants but I think we’re learning quickly what an occupier actually wants on a day-to-day basis.”
Steve Dobson added: “I think all of us are involved in projects where budget is paramount. It’s one of the key drivers. Regarding the projects we’re in, AV doesn’t seem to get cut. It’s more furniture is the first one that gets cut for us as an internal fit-out. We have an AV specialist that we bring in as part of a package when we’re doing a Cat B fit out because all of those specialists, be it MEP, AV, acoustician… they all come together to produce it.”
Leanne Wookey added: “MEP, for me is the most crucial element because all your senses are hit by what the MEP provides – light, sound, sense, warmth… the temperature will always be a big factor in there. The last bit that we come in contact with is the touch. But even then, MEPs would provide that, because it needs to be a user friendly interaction. The same thing with AV but I think that’s the last little block in the education piece… that we can bring in AV later on.
“However I think it’s probably an easier conversation to have now since lockdown. I think before lockdown it was a very hard conversation. We’ve come a long way and, as horrible as the pandemic was, it broke a lot of systems that were just there because they were there.”
