Advanced Installs High-Tech Collaboration Tools in Air Canada's New Systems Operations Control Center

When Canada’s largest airline, Air Canada, decided to relocate its Systems Operation Control (SOC) Center to a new site outside of Toronto, the company knew it needed to include modern technologies that would enable its employees to learn, work and collaborate easier and more efficiently than ever before. To do this, the forward-looking airline hired Advanced, Canada’s premier AV and IT integrator, to install cutting edge presentation and communication tools throughout the new facility.

According to Advanced Co-President David Weatherhead, “Air Canada wanted to provide its employees with modern technological tools that would enhance productivity, simplify staff education, and accelerate collaboration. We worked with Thor Hoff, the IT Project Manager of the SOC relocation, to design professional AV systems for 13 rooms that are now being used for meetings, conferences, collaboration and training. By making it easy for staff members to share ideas, make presentations and manipulate digital files on SMART Boards, these rooms are a marked improvement over a standard meeting or conference room.”

The team at Advanced designed two large conference rooms, four medium sized meeting rooms, two open concept collaboration spaces, two large training rooms and three small training rooms, each with a SMART Board and slim PC for quick, simple presentation access. All of the rooms aside from the collaboration spaces have audio systems and the large conference rooms and large training rooms have control systems and projectors that make them ideal for presenting to large groups. The slim PCs provide the fastest, easiest way for staff to make presentations and load files for use through the SMART Boards or projectors, requiring only a memory stick and eliminating the need to plug in a separate laptop or PC.

Two of the top priorities for the installation were maintaining a clean, modern look and making everything simple to use for streamlined meetings and training sessions. Advanced’s experience and professionalism at installing large, complicated AV collaboration solutions allowed them to deliver on every need of Air Canada.

They also needed a way to connect staff laptops, so Advanced installed wall-mounted AV outlets that connect directly to the SMART Boards through VGA or HDMI. The goal of the project was to deliver the latest conference room technologies, so when a new version of the SMART Board was released just prior to installation Advanced made modifications to the site drawings and installed the brand new models instead.

“Companies large and small are moving toward integrated presentation and learning tools for their conference and training rooms,” said Weatherhead, “and they are allowing employees to be more productive and creative through digital collaboration. Air Canada has taken a great step forward to making this a reality with their new SOC.”