Every day more and more organizations consider showing their operations management control rooms as the heart of their corporate image. The interest of whomever visits the core of the companies is very high since they want to see as internally as possible how it is done to optimize and succeed in certain business or project by analysing data, automating processes, and remotely controlling and dispatching different types of services or using critical tools, its completely amazing.

Sometimes, the mentioned visits are organized for royalty or political reasons, or simply because it is such an achievement for the public entities or governments in general that important people visit the facilities. For example, succeeding to improve the security, safety and surveillance during Haj in Makkah city was such a success due to the 911 program caused a dramatic drop on the rate of negative issues during the season. The best way to demonstrate how the 911 program works is by visiting their operations centre.

The top key factors to get a positive outcome in such a project are not easy to implement and depending on the preliminary works developed by architects, consultants, designers and suppliers, it will be easier or harder for the system integrator to do.

Always keep your eye in top functionality

It is true that visitors can be amazed by outstanding hightech futuristic interior decorations, but it should be never forgotten to keep the focus in functionality, its design and in the reviewing of every step, so that functionality is always kept on the highest rate.

High level of customization

Each organization has a different mission, vision and values, therefore a different message for the world. That is why customization in all aspects is essential to help the companies achieve to transmit that message through the look and feel of the control room space. High customization in furniture, for example, allows the end user to request adaptations between the aesthetics he desires and the functionality he needs, which in some cases is the most challenging and thrilling part of the job. Customization capacity is one of the top features to investigate when choosing the right partner to work in a control room design.

Correct Audio-Visual technology

In all control rooms, audio-visual technology implementation is essential to collaborate, communicate, show and explain all needed data analysis, translating it to understandable easy access visualizations. The mission’s critical information has to be accessible for fast decisionmaking improving the speed of each process.

The combination of AV equipment must follow the rule about top functionality mentioned before but, as well as the aesthetics of the furniture, the choice of certain AV equipment will push one step ahead the WOW factor in the control room.

Looking into the future of critical environments and considering the evolution of screens and monitors and how operators collaborate and share information, it is more and more frequent to find the need for more flexible designs. Thus, the collaboration space is brought to the operator’s position itself by means of high resolution and bigger format monitors and using Dynamic KVM systems, such as DeskWall, as the main tool to allow a comfortable, ergonomic and functional work position and, at the same time, achieving the high added value needed in terms of showcasing the solutions to the visitors.

The development of interior design

Choices on materials, colours, fabrics, shapes, lights, and furniture keeping good care of the acoustics, illumination, usability, and aesthetics is a challenging task to carry out. Moreover, it is a task that be combined with the technical aspects to be considered in a critical environment, like a control room. The mentioned task can only be developed correctly by an architect, who also has a deep understanding of the elements and international standards to be complied in control rooms to assure a successful result.

The choice of the final space

One of the most common challenges that are faced during the design of a control room is that, in certain cases, the space available for the mentioned room is restrictive in terms of width, length but, moreover, free height. This frequently pushes the design of the furniture and videowall to the limits, in order to allow the correct visualization of the elements and compliance on the ergonomic standards.

It is crucial to trust the correct supporter on the choices regarding space before taking the decision of where the control room will be located inside the building. A proper control room for showcasing the strengths and performance of any organization should have either good free height to allow the installation of a video wall if needed or the allowance to design an out of the box solution, excluding the use of video wall and introducing new flexible solutions with Digital KVM technology.

Corporate image adaptation all over the facilities

Corporations and organizations worldwide have a high interest in engagement of work force. In the niche segment of control rooms, this is even more important due to the critical tasks the operators and supervisors are developing day by day, so their stress and anxiety could be in high rates. Therefore, apart from providing them with a comfortable, ergonomic and healthy environment to avoid absenteeism, the employer must look into the engagement that the worker has with the brand or agency by empowering and making them proud of where they provide service to.

The correct and elegant inclusion of logos, slogans, corporate colours, as well as the content and descriptions of mission, vision and values on determined areas of the space and infrastructure where employees everyday can see them, is a very good way to put the cherry on the top of any operation centre.