Urban Utilities provides water and waste management services to residents and commercial customers in the Brisbane, Ipswich, Lockyer Valley, Scenic Rim and Somerset local government areas. They are the fourth largest water provider in Australia.
Videopro was engaged in August 2022 on a design and construct scenario in conjunction with Hutchinson Builders as Urban Utilities moved locations. At the new Urban Utilities head office at 31 Duncan Street, there are 30 AV spaces consisting of small, medium and large meeting rooms, executive offices and a boardroom, along with more bespoke spaces including a large control room, emergency room, project spaces and an area called The Hive that can facilitate between 60 to 80 people for large scale presentations. The reception area has a 3x2m video wall and there is digital signage throughout the building which allows Urban Utilities to share marketing content, workplace information and wayfinding information. Amongst that there is an overarching system which monitors space utilisation in the building.
Videopro provided a navigation and wayfinding solution via Condeco which allows each workstation to be booked in advance through a mobile application or through tiles on the desk where staff can simply tap on and tap off with their work ID. In addition to this, Videopro installed a Relogix sensor system which identifies how many people are in each room at any given time. The Relogix and Condeco systems tie together and the reporting feeds out to Power BI where the data can be analysed to ensure all spaces are being utilised.
Urban Utilities’ previous premises had minimal technology that connected those workers in the field or at home to those in the office. The new meeting rooms enable connection and equity irrespective of where employees are, to participate equally in meetings and offer the same experience for all. Urban Utilities also wanted the user experience to be seamless and easy to use so employees could walk into any room or join a meeting remotely and always have a consistent experience.
The audio and visual are reticulated over Extron’s NAV system with the audio itself being predominantly Q-SYS, conveyed via Dante to different locations along with Sennheiser beam-steering microphones in the larger, bespoke spaces. The conferencing cameras are a mix of Logitech, Poly and AVer.
There are also areas that have been designed deliberately to bring multiple parties together for long-term projects with mobile furniture including the control room. This space provides 24undefined7 monitoring and services for Urban Utilities’ network of infrastructure, assets and sites. The control room has five 85” screens at the front of the room that content can be shared to via the Extron NAV system with each employee also having their individual workspace.
Beside the control room is the emergency room. This space has a 55” custom-built touchscreen for Urban Utilities that the Incident Management Team can stand around and drive content, which they can also share on the monitors at the front of the room. The space has been designed to enable them to do their job BAU and respond to major incidents as they occur.
This site has set a baseline of capability for Urban Utilities. Both the AV and the workspace technology will be what is rolled out at their other locations going forward. Videopro has a 2 year contract with Urban Utilities and are looking forward to a long partnership.
