Imagine Centre, Essex

Essex County Council approached Impleo to design and deliver a high level Audio Visual IT solution providing a futuristic learning environment in the Imagine Centre at the Weston Homes Community Stadium in Colchester – a prestigious new development and the new home to Colchester United Football Club.

Objectives

The vision for Essex County Council and the Imagine Centre was to inspire and develop education principles through interactive teaching using a range of interactive technologies. The solution was to provide centralized wireless control of all systems and integrated Audio Visual equipment with seamless manipulation of the educational content sources across the devices.

Methodology

Working in conjunction with the Essex County Council team and the multiple contractors led by Horizon, Impleo identified the end to end requirements for the Audio Visual IT solution and provided innovative design concepts. The design met precisely the customer’s expectations for their Immersive Learning vision.

Detailed Design

A site survey was conducted to provide the information necessary to carry out the detailed design which was intended to be as fully integrated within the building fabric as possible in order to yield a clean, clear space.

Once this information had been captured and the integrity verified amongst the teams, detailed Low Level designs were produced using CAD and Visio to precisely identify solution configuration. This provided a visual representation of the overall solution and schematics for Power, Lighting, Transmission, Wireless and cable deployment for the specific multistage build phases.

Work Breakdown Structures and deployment plans were synchronized with the overall project implementation plans.

Execution

Impleo worked with the team from Essex County Council, their consultants and their contract partners to provide a unique Immersive learning environment which will inspire and develop education principles through interactive teaching.

Impleo provided end to end project management of the Audio Visual solution delivery working very closely with the lead Essex Project Manager, providing an agreed project plan identifying Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) with supporting Gantt chart. Change was managed in accordance with standard Change Control with all impacts being assessed and reported to the lead Project Manager for approval.

Impleo worked alongside all other various trades and disciplines in order to achieve the project timeline.

Testing and Acceptance was conducted in line with Impleo’s standard ATP (Acceptance Test Plan).

Following completion a series of training sessions were undertaken to familiarise users with the systems’ capability and the means of controlling the system. Imagine Centre users were given indepth training on key elements of the systems.

The Solution

The solution delivered all functionality in accordance with the Impleo specification and the Imagine Centre has become a regional centre of ICT excellence for Essex County Council and Colchester United Community Sports Trust. The Essex Imagine Centre will provide a safe and secure environment where learners will be encouraged to experience new ways of flexible learning and technological advancement in curricular and extracurricular whilst coexisting in one exciting place.

Achievements

This high profile project is the realisation of a long held dream of Councillor Lewis, Essex County Council, Kate Holland, the Imagine Centre and the Colchester United Community Sports Trust. This vision was to provide educational and community users with a centre of excellence for innovative technology and ideas for education and wider community use.

The Imagine Centre has met the high expectations of those sponsoring the project and is set to become a national benchmark for those aspiring to evolve their own Immersive Learning strategies.

Technological Firsts

The Widescreen HD projection system is the one of the largest of its kind in the country. The centre boasts three 65” Samsung eBoards being the first of their kind in the UK and the first 9 screen video wall with touchinteractive capability.