The third department that I chose to stay for my second phase placement scheme is Manage on-site, which is also the last department that I will be staying before choosing the final department for the rest of my placement. Manage on-site, just like its name, it is a department that is based on the client site and as a company we work there as a contractor to take care of all their AV equipment in a daily-basis. It is also part of the service department that manage on-site is provided to a bigger client and the client site I am staying with is Deloitte LLP, which I have came and did a one-day experience few months back in my first phase. As it is a department that is based on the client site, where is in London that I have to commute to London every day. I won’t say the trip itself is very enjoyable cause the rush hour travelling were just kinda like a nightmare. But having some experience to become a London worker is pretty cool I’d say.
At Deloitte’s site, there are two teams that are covered within our service including events management and engineering maintenance. Event management is taking care of all the AV system that is happening within a meeting, presentation or conference call. The events can easily just be a presentation that only requires mics and contents display, or complicated as a full production streaming that includes audio, camera, conferencing, streaming and recording. In such a big organisation like Deloitte, there are always several conferencing and presentations going on every hour that the event team needs to get involved. As for the engineering maintenance team, they are not just looking after the rooms that has been installed but still helping up to finishing up the projects that are in the final commissioning stage. As in some of the client site, they won’t just have the systems and rooms that are being designed and installed by us, however that one project could be completed between several AV installers. In that case, while doing maintenance and commissioning, communication between each other is a key point in terms of delivering projects to the end-users’ side.
As getting a month experience in manage on-site myself, I am basically running between both teams just to get an overview. In my first week of manage on-site, I have been into several events to help out with micing up presenters, packing up displays and doing some vision mixing, which I would say it is very similar to what I was doing back in TV studio in Surrey but just in a more cooperate aspects. As in the engineering team, they have some previous installation to finishing off by installing some Logitech control panel among the rooms, which I would get a chance to take a look later on next week. The main project I have kinda get a chance to shadow in the engineering team was assigning contents from signage player portal to several displays. The signage around the buildings are playing out individually from the BrightSign signage player which is mounted behind each display and the contents are centrally assigned from an online portal. What the clients are expecting to see from the displays are the video they’ve provided also with the general IPTV that is playing news and switch between them in a certain amount of time. The challenges which has came across for the engineering them is the settings of the groups and layers on the signage portal, which must be set up in the correct order to enable the contents to be play out.
Apart from the main projects that are currently up and running in terms of commission and installation, the daily basis general support to the rooms are also being managed and spread out within the team. From someone ripped off a HDMI cable which one of our engineers needs to go and replace it, to the video conferencing system that is not functioning and needs to be re-configured, there are always different challenges and problems that have to be solved. One of the reasons of choosing manage on-site as the third and the last department to get a short experience in was to get more understanding in the general system that has been designed and used from the end-user’s view, which I can benefit from when it comes to design.
Starting from next week, I should be able to get more chances to see the conference devices between different manufacturers and for different purposes. So don’t forget to come back and check out my post next time! See you soon:)
Mandy
