Consolidating the workplace of the future

The background

Our client, one of the world’s foremost business strategy consulting firms, operates with a team of over 30,000 professionals across more than 50 offices worldwide, supporting the largest 500 corporations across North America, South America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Australia.

With rapid growth in their London team, they sought to consolidate two separate offices into one unified, cutting-edge location designed to enhance collaboration and technological connectivity. The goal was to establish a more sophisticated workspace that enabled seamless Unified Communication and Collaboration (UCC) across all areas, equipping their global workforce with user-friendly, high-quality technology to facilitate smooth and effective teamwork.

After a highly competitive selection process, Kinly was chosen as the client’s trusted AV technology advisor, based on its scale, expertise, and the capability to deliver exceptional outcomes. Kinly’s role was to refit and enhance the new building with innovative solutions, meeting the consultancy’s exacting standards for global connectivity and collaboration.

The solution

The building comprises four floors, based on Cisco’s global standards. The original design evolved to include the addition of advanced single cable connectivity in all spaces, enabling both VC standards and full BOYD capabilities, along with ethernet and power.

All rooms are Mersive capable, allowing for seamless over the network wireless sharing. The meeting spaces comprise 235 Cisco- enabled rooms spread over the four levels, as well as two-person workspaces and 12-person dual display client meeting rooms. In addition, the office is equipped with 14 digital signage and wayfinding displays, as well as an exhibition space, café and social terraces.

The most technologically advanced area of the new office is the 180-person dual divisible, multipurpose event space, powered by twin 1.2mm FinePitch NEC LED videowalls. Each wall is 7.2 metres wide by 1.4 metres high. They are set into a bespoke sliding frame which allows the wall to be separated when the spaces are used as single rooms. The event space can be manned by the on-site team with roving microphones, camera control and full casting capabilities for global Town Halls. When used as two single rooms, each space has its own dedicated control systems which enable video calls, training and other large meetings.

The result

The project began in June 2020 and was completed in May of 2022. It sets the standard for future-facing office spaces and has been recognised as the winner of the British Council for Offices Commercial Workplace for London, 2022. In addition, the project received an assessment score of 9.8 from Overbury, a leading provider of office fit out and refurbishment services.

Kinly continues to support the client’s AV estate and currently has a managed on-site team in place including an AV manager and two on-site technicians. In addition, Kinly’s Global Services division supports the building, allowing all on-site engineering teams to leverage our advanced Subject Matter Experts over the network. This includes support for everything from programming changes to complex fault resolution. Kinly smart monitoring is also leveraged, providing the client, the on-site team, and Kinly’s Service Desk with continuous connectivity to monitor the performance and status of all systems in real-time.