How to determine the best layout for your control room?
No two control rooms are the same, not even if they belong to the same industry. Two 911 control centers will have similar needs but that doesn’t mean their organizational goals are the same.
To design an efficient and modern control room, you need to consider 2 types of factors that will impact your decision-making process. First consider the tangible factors that have an immediate and obvious influence in the room. Think of things like where the electrical power is coming from, how the building manages ventilation and how data cables are routed to and from the room.
The other type of factors to consider that will influence your control room layout are the intangible factors, which are often overlooked, but are just as critical as the tangible ones. These things include aspects such as noise, lighting in the room and at the individual level, the colors decorating the room and the equipment, the grouping of people or workstations, as well as the overall feel and atmosphere of the room. For a detailed approach to designing a control room layout ask yourself these questions.
Different layouts in recent Case Studies
Here are some of our recent installations that we have done for our clients. Each case study goes in depth to explain what the needs of our clients were and how we helped them met their requirements.
The project had specific requirements, including the need to accommodate between 6 and 8 workstations, including supervisors and dispatchers, each with support for a minimum of four 22-inch monitors and enclosures for CPUs. Additionally, the raised floors of the control room had to be considered in our floor layout design.
Faced with both an ageing emergency communications center (PSAP) and increasing demand for quicker response times, a leading medical response organization decided to retire an old communications center and build a next-generation techsavvy replacement. The consoles are configured in different clusters to group emergency call takers, first respondent dispatchers, and call center supervisors.
Our solution for Bombardier involved the design and production of 62 state-of-the-art consoles that would form the backbone of their customer response center. These consoles were meticulously crafted to meet Bombardier's specific requirements and optimized for ergonomic comfort, functionality, and durability. With a total of over 100 employees working on them daily, our consoles have helped Bombardier create an efficient, streamlined workspace that delivers world-class support to their global network of engineers.
Our client’s Backup Communications Centre needed updated consoles to meet the additional headcount and increasing technological demands. Much of the center was to be a call taking and dispatch area. So, the placement was twofold; to accommodate as many available stations as possible, and to encourage communication between call takers.
The new centralized dispatch center renovation project included the complete teardown and rebuild of the emergency communications center. The other main challenge was in how to bring in Police, Fire and EMS in one room while maintain autonomy and creating an open space for collaborative work. The final design resulted in a heavy-duty highly functional dispatch center with a very impressive and empowering visual aesthetic.
This open floor plan enables supervisors to easily oversee operations and approach operators for assistance, enhancing the management's effectiveness. Also, the pod configuration provides each dispatcher with their own workspace while promoting teamwork and communication among operators.
This new center would group all the teams who work as part of the police service. The consoles were to be arranged in the following configuration, 10 control consoles setup in 3 rows, leaving enough space for foot-transit inside the control center. 2 consoles would be placed side by side leaving enough space for a storage unit between the 2 consoles
Request a Free Floor Design!
At Sustema, our consoles are designed with a firm understanding of the rigorous conditions that telecommunicators face in the control room environment. Please let us know if you have any questions regarding our products and services by contacting us at 1-800-455-8450 or by email at info@sustema.com.