We have designed over 350 control rooms across a range of sectors and throughout the world for clients including CERN, London Metropolitan Police, Abu Dhabi Police, Network Rail and Heathrow Airport.
We bring a user-centered approach that unifies the workspace design, operations and the integration of technology. Our team is a blend of ergonomists, operational experts, interior designers and technologists.
Our methodology involves end-users in the control room design process and is proven to help organisations manage the change process present in all control centre programmes.
Control Room Strategy: the very first step
This begins at the inception of your project. With early thinking we help you to look at the drivers for change and understand your strategic objectives, guiding the strategic direction.
Key decisions are often made at the outset – from our experience we can help you understand the implications of these. We can look at feasibility studies, building selection, initial requirements and benchmarking lessons from other projects.
These are the strategic building blocks of a good project. Drawing on our 40 years experience in designing high performing control centres, we help our clients to get these decisions right from the outset.
Control Room Consultancy: end-to-end operational excellence
Operational processes, technology and the room itself are often designed in isolation, leading to disconnects between systems, operators and service delivery.
We help you to design an operations organisation: starting with people and their jobs; looking at communication flows, decision making and team working. We help our clients look at improving their customer service through smart service design in their operation. We help to draw together all these elements for more efficient operations and delivery of better levels of service.
Control Room Technology: human-machine synergy
We design control suites that harmonise humans and machines. We fuse usability, system interface UX and control technology with 40 years of expertise in putting the user at the centre of the control room expertise. We look at the human understanding of system design and allocation of function.
We map develop user requirements, we test scenarios, we analysed workloads and assess the potential for human error to get a realistic view of the current system and where the technology needs to be in the future.
Control Room Design and Layout: optimising physical space
We design ergonomic room layouts and spaces that enable operations to support human performance. Our consultancy work means we understand the connections, interactions and behaviours the space needs to empower users to deliver excellent operations.
Your control centre is a showcase – a platform to give your investors, clients and vendors trust and belief in your services. We understand this, and provide an interior design service that blends ergonomic considerations with creativity and attention to detail.
Situations we can help with:
Your project:
Concept of Operations
Co-location of control rooms
Consolidation of control rooms
Program of works
Benchmarking
Building selection
Migration planning
Feasibility studies
People:
Systems UX
Ergonomics studies
User requirements
Operator-system synergy
Process/task analysis
Workload assessment
Human error
Staff Retention
Absenteeism
Design:
Critical communication channels
Crisis management
Environment impacts
Physical & electronic security
Mock-up trials & simulation
Participatory design
Service design
Technology:
User requirements
Integrating comms tech
Overview displays
Audio visual technology
Virtual collaboration
Data visualisation
Human-Machine Interface – HMI
Human-Computer Interaction – HCI
Machine-Machine Interaction – MMI
Insights
Laying good foundations through Control Room Strategy
The challenges of laying good foundations at the early stages of control room projects, and how making good decisions at the outset saves on costs and mistakes later in the process.
Designing out distraction in your control room
How the design of physical things, systems and spaces around us can help prevent overloading, and why this is particularly important in critical and control environments.
Digital Rail – factoring in the humans
The importance of keeping people at the centre of digital rail developments.