POMT
NSW DEPARTMENT
OF PREMIER AND
CABINET
52 Martin Place
Sydney, NSW 2000
Services
________________________
Implementation
Support
Solutions
________________________
Audio Visual
Collaboration and Interactivity
Workspace Management
Media Distribution
PROJECT PROFILE • NSW DEPARTMENT OF PREMIER AND CABINET
A TRANSFORMATIONAL
OFFICE RELOCATION AND
TECHNOLOGY REVAMP
BRIEF
In 2014, NSW State Government’s Ministry, Department
of Premier and Cabinet (the ‘Department’), and NSW
Treasury planned a relocation to new office space in
Sydney.
POMT was awarded the tender to design, implement
and provide on-site support services for the audio
visual (AV), workspace management and media
distribution solutions to enable activity-based working
and collaboration for 1250 staff across 20 office floors
and more than 100 meeting rooms, breakout spaces and
informal meeting areas.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
Honouring a commitment made during the 2011
elections to relocate the Department to more costeffective offices, a long-term lease was signed in 2013
for 20 floors of office space at 52 Martin Place. The
move is expected to save the NSW Government $90
million over 12 years, with the new facilities to deliver
greater utilisation and operational benefits. The new
space was planned to accommodate staff from the
Department, NSW Treasury and the NSW Ministry.
While there would be significant cost savings from the
move, the relocation also represented an opportunity
to benefit from a complete upgrade of the outdated
technologies used across the departments, explained
David Schneider, Chief Information Officer, NSW
Department of Premier and Cabinet.
‘Do you have the right tools and
technology to do your job?’
“In the Department of Premier and Cabinet end-user
technology infrastructure was quite outdated. We were
mostly using desktop computers and had no wireless
networking capability. We had at least 150 printers for
just 400 staff, and no standard AV technologies. In our
meetings rooms, staff would often give up trying to get
the technology to work, so we really needed to improve
the quality of the AV,” said Schneider.
“In 2014, just before the move, we undertook a
comprehensive staff survey. The survey question that
received the lowest rating was ‘do you have the right
tools and technology to do your job?’. The relocation
gave us a great opportunity to significantly improve the
technologies our people were using.”
Wanting to implement a largely open plan, activity-based
work environment, representatives from the Department
and the NSW Government Architect’s Office toured and
reviewed best-practice examples in Sydney, including
Microsoft, Commonwealth Bank and KPMG.
The new offices were designed with between 80-90
percent of floor space devoted to flexible working, with a
small percentage of staff provided with dedicated desks
and office space, due to the sensitivity of their roles or
quantity of paper documentation they had to manage.
PROJECT PROFILE • NSW DEPARTMENT OF PREMIER AND CABINET
SOLUTIONS DEPLOYED
The separate ICT procurement tenders were released
in 2013 for the relocation to 52 Martin Place tenders
covered the design, implementation and support for
networking, unified communications and audio visual.
POMT was tasked with designing and implementing AV,
workspace management and media distribution solutions
to over 20 floors and more than 100 meeting rooms,
and other formal and informal spaces. Also incorporated
in the contract was on-going managed services,
maintenance and on-site support personnel.
“POMT met the tender’s cost requirements, showed
great vision on the linkages between AV and the
workspace, and also demonstrated its ability to deliver
the AV technologies we need to support activity-based
working,” stated Schneider.
ALIGNMENT OF THE PLANETS
In preparation for the move, the Department completed
a hardware refresh, deploying new laptops to all staff,
implemented a managed print service with ‘follow me
printing’, and also completed upgrades to its messaging
platform and standard operating environment.
“The planets aligned for us. We had executive
commitment, the budget to achieve the outcomes
we wanted, and hard timeframes for the move,” said
Schneider.
The Department now has meeting rooms available on all
20 levels, including one entire floor dedicated to meeting
and seminar rooms, supported by a dedicated concierge
service. Each room is managed using Condeco’s room
booking system, integrated with the Department’s
Microsoft Outlook calendaring system, with a screen
outside each room showing the current room status and
schedule. Meetings are ‘confirmed’ with a wave of that
person’s proximity security card.
POMT implemented a standardised Crestron control
system with wall-mounted control panels and additional
iPad interfaces for more complex spaces; integrated
large format LCD monitors and interactive projectors;
Crestron Digital Media distribution and switching;
and sophisticated audio systems including ceiling
conferencing for larger spaces.
Presenters can use the AV and videoconferencing
facilities in each room wirelessly via an application that
can be easily installed on their laptops. This application
also enables staff to use any of the interactive monitors,
whiteboards or projectors throughout the office.
“The customised user interface makes
it very intuitive for all users to access
the technologies available to them
for meetings, presentations and
videoconferencing."
Each floor has a large informal space, including a
kitchen, plus large monitors for media distribution. This
allows the Department to broadcast customised content
as well as stream parliamentary proceedings.
To facilitate flexible working, the Department has
installed a mix of sitting, standing and re-configurable
desks to suit each staff member’s preferred way of
working. Each desk is fitted with a monitor, laptop
docking station, wired keyboard and mouse, and a VoIP
handset. Once a staff member docks their laptop and
logs into the phone, they are ready to work. A bank of
printers are centrally located on each floor, with print
jobs activated and collected from any printer with a wave
of the person’s proximity card.
Informal spaces on each floor are designed to facilitate
collaboration, using interactive whiteboards, enabling
staff to simply write or sketch, save and distribute
content to participants, or to mark up documents,
presentations or graphics projected via their laptops.
“While people tend to gravitate towards the same desks,
we’ve seen a lot more interaction and collaboration
among different functional teams across the Department
since we’ve implemented flexible working,” said
Schneider.
PROJECT PROFILE • NSW DEPARTMENT OF PREMIER AND CABINET
RAPID RESPONSE TO ISSUES
As part of its managed services to support the
Department’s solutions, POMT has a dedicated fulltime on-site resource at 52 Martin Place. That support
resource completes daily walkthroughs to ensure all the
meeting rooms and technologies are fully operational
and in standard configuration. They also provide on-call
reactive user and technology support for any reported
issues or difficulties, and manage the uploading and
publication of digital content via the media distribution
server.
“It’s important for us to have an on-site resource
available to ensure a rapid response to any issues so
that our meetings can get started on time. It’s also been
invaluable to have someone available to provide ad hoc
or scheduled training for new users in our meeting room
and AV technologies,” said Schneider.
OBSERVATIONS & FUTURE PLANS
The Department is looking to integrate and continue
to enhance its various unified communications
technologies, including its videoconferencing facilities,
catering for a range of different use cases.
“We are also investigating how we can best connect
via video with people outside the organisation. As
an example, we would like to integrate our video
conferencing systems to also be able to use Skype,”
said Schneider.
Eighteen months into the relocation, the Department is
currently undertaking measurement of desktop utilisation
to review whether any tweaking is required.
Schneider has found the interactive whiteboards are
not being utilised as effectively as they could be. “In our
desire to go fully electronic, we didn’t factor in people’s
preference for traditional whiteboards and paper flip
charts. We still get people asking, where are our
whiteboards?” He believes that it will just take more user
awareness and training to see an increase in utilisation.
The implementation of wireless and the simplification of
access to the network – the Department’s staff can now
connect from anywhere in the world via VPN using wi-fi,
home broadband or 3G/4G – has seen the Department
re-shaping its working from home policies and using
regional work hubs. The result could be further cost
savings by reducing the reliance on expensive CBD
office space.
PROJECT OUTCOMES
•
AGILE WORKING
Workspace management and interactive
technology solutions to support activity-based
office environment.
•
CONSISTENT USABILITY
Common user experience across all
collaborate technologies and workspaces.
•
ENHANCED COLLABORATION
Optimised AV and media distribution to unite
teams and improve internal communications.
www.pomt.com