Skipping AV in those early talks can end up costing you a lot more on the back end.
Let’s say you’re building out a brand-new conference room. You know the basics of what you need:
- A display to see presentations and remote participants
- A spot to plug in a laptop to share content
- Clear, two-way audio
- A camera to capture everyone in the room
So, your architect designs a stunning space. An east-facing wall of windows floods the room with natural light and a gorgeous view of the river. A glass corridor wall makes it feel open and inviting. A sleek credenza sits up front for storage, and an open ceiling with a custom wood-slat cloud hangs over a solid marble table to give it a feeling of pure luxury. It looks amazing on paper.
But now, let’s try to bring technology into that space:
- The Light: That beautiful natural light from the east means any displays mounted on the north or south walls are going to suffer from wash-out.
- The Acoustics: Glass walls paired with the metal decking in an open ceiling turn the room into an echo chamber, creating a distracting experience for anyone on the far end.
- The Ceiling: That beautiful wood cloud makes positioning speakers and microphones exactly where they need to go a challenge.
- The Layout: The credenza restricts how big your main display can be, and those glass walls mean you can’t easily mount extra screens to fix awkward sight lines.
- The Table: That solid marble table makes it incredibly challenging (and risky) to cut in connectivity for power, cables, and room controllers.
With the right AV partner, you can still work through these hurdles to engineer a functioning solution—but it won’t always be elegant.
We might have to ceiling mount delay screens because the walls are glass, racking up rigging costs. Or, the ceiling contractor might have to come back and cut rough holes in that custom wood cloud in the field. There are a dozen different ways this reactive approach adds hassle, time, and money to a project.
The Early Advantage
If your AV partner is brought into the conversation early, technology considerations are woven right into the room design before general trades go out to bid.
That wood-slat ceiling stays, but the speaker cutouts are factored into the factory build. The east windows get a subtle film to balance the light. The marble table is ordered with precise, pre-cut slots for elegant cable cubbies. The more we communicate before design development ends, the lower your overall costs and the fewer headaches for everyone involved.
Here at Axent, we understand that it isn’t always possible to get your AV partner involved at the absolute start of construction. We outfit existing spaces all the time and excel at making tech work for our customers, even if the room isn’t “perfect.” However, if you are planning a new construction project, we strongly recommend bringing your AV partner to the table on day one. It will save you time, money, and a whole lot of energy in the long run.