Implementing Hybrid Meeting and Digital Signage Solutions for Tower Hamlets

Tower Hamlets is a lively and energetic place to reside, work, study and engage in recreational activities. They have a diverse and imaginative community, along with award-winning parks. With a recorded population of 310,300 (2021 census), it is the fastest growing population in the UK. The borough aims to provide opportunities by assisting ambitions and addressing poverty along with establishing and sustaining a thriving and prosperous environment.

Photo Credit: Tower Hamlets Council

Requirements

The Borough’s new landmark town hall in Whitechapel required an extensive set-up of audio visual technology across various spaces. The infrastructure had to support a hybrid meeting solution, integrating into their Office 365 ecosystem. The main requirement involved 15 spaces, a mix of Hybrid Meeting Rooms and Dedicated Space Meeting Rooms. These required varying numbers of 4K screens and Teams Panel door panels, depending on their size and function. The AV solution had to accommodate Zoom to MS Teams invites, if necessary. Additional “nice-to-have” specifications included smart framing and speaker tracking, optimised audio and room-specific camera and networking configurations. There was an overarching requirement for a cloud-hosted digital signage system and a total of 27 display screens for communication purposes across the building. Lastly, we were asked to install 3 large screens in a committee room.

Solution

To address all requirements of Tower Hamlets, we designed the small, medium and large meeting rooms to feature almost the same AV equipment and common system interface. All rooms have commercial grade 75-inch Samsung screens. The spaces are further equipped with Yealink Teams Rooms solutions including the MCore mini-PC, CPW90 wireless microphones, UVC86 cameras, MSpeak II speakers and 54 MTouch panels where the 1 Touch Join feature appears. The positions and numbers of all AV equipment vary depending on the room size. Ceiling sensors connect to room booking panels via Bluetooth. One of the smaller meeting rooms features the all-in-one Yealink UVC40 video bar. For the digital signage we installed 27 BrightSign media players across the building. BrightSign’s products are known for their reliability and ease-of-use. These are all connected to a central CMS cloud service to manage the content distribution to different areas.

Project Benefits

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets are very happy with the end result because it brings along a number of benefits:

Enhanced Collaboration: The hybrid meeting solution based entirely on Microsoft Teams provides a seamless environment for employees to collaborate, regardless of their location. This promotes more efficient communication and decision-making within the Council.
High-Quality Communication: The equipment we chose for this project improves meeting efficiency and enhances participants’ understanding and engagement.
Consistent experience: The uniform design of AV equipment across small, medium and large meeting rooms allows for an adaptable and consistent user experience. Whether it’s a small team huddle or a large committee meeting, the technology can support a diverse range of meeting requirements.
Efficient Space Management: The room sensors work in conjunction with the room booking panel, detecting whether a room is empty or not as people come in and leave. The main benefit of these sensors is to make a room available for booking as soon as it becomes empty and reduce the wasted resource of an under-utilised room.
Multi-platform Compatibility: The AV solution is not only optimised for Microsoft Teams but also could be set up to accept Zoom meeting invites, ensuring accessibility and connectivity for diverse external stakeholders.