In 2014, the City of Portland set the ambitious goal of remodeling its iconic 425,000-sf civic office building—known as the Portland Building—and reshaping their organizational culture in the process. Delta AV collaborated in a multi-year design/build relationship with the City of Portland and Howard S. Wright Construction to transform the building’s AV capabilities and dramatically improve usability for everyone.
The historically-significant 15-story Portland Building houses more than 1,400 workers assigned to multiple city and county bureaus. Originally designed by Michael Graves and built in 1982, the building was lauded as an early example of post-modern architecture. Unfortunately, it also suffered from significant structural, mechanical, and AV design issues that couldn’t be solved with repairs. As a result, the City allocated nearly $200 million to completely renovate and modernize the facility. One of the goals of the renovation was to eliminate organizational silos and improve communication by making the building’s meeting spaces more functional and inclusive.
Delta AV researched, designed, and installed a state-of-the-art AV system in all meeting, conference, and huddle rooms—replacing the diverse patchwork of systems and standards previously used by different bureaus. Each floor now features one large conference room, two medium-sized conference rooms, and six focus rooms. Since the AV equipment in every room is identical and easy to use, any employee in the building can reserve any of the rooms through a central booking system and instantly know how to operate them, regardless of what floor their bureau is located on.
“In the past, each bureau determined its own AV standards and systems, which led to a lot of IT complications and departmental silos,” says Chris Cavanagh, City of Portland Reconstruction Technology Lead. “Now, all of the different room types have identical AV systems, which increases cross-pollination between floors and creates a consistent experience for the users regardless of their location in the building. This standardized technology approach also makes it easy for us to quickly resolve service and support issues.”
Making the Complex Simple
Designing enjoyable, productive meeting spaces where the technology functions seamlessly for every user required a team of highly experienced professionals collaborating on the tiniest of details. The team at Delta even developed a full-scale huddle room for users to test before implementing across the whole building. As part of this design/build process, Delta AV researched and implemented the latest AV solutions—including discrete directional microphones invisibly mounted in the ceiling, large retractable projection screens, and an HD video system connected to a robust network that provides crisp, clear audio/video conferencing for each person in the room—even in large meetings.
“There are a hundred and eight conference rooms in this building and the great thing is that, if you can function in the smallest room, you can function in the largest,” says Cavanagh. “You can go to any floor or any conference room and it feels the same. I can't emphasize enough how big of a deal that is for us. It has made such a huge difference in everyone’s confidence and ability to do their work.”
Results
The freshly remodeled 21st century iteration of the Portland Building is now a light-filled source of awe, inspiration, and collaboration. Its technologically unified meeting and huddle rooms are now a seamless hive of productivity with an intuitive AV system that provides stunning live presentation and video conferencing capabilities. And the most common reaction it gets from the people using it every day is: “Wow! This is awesome!”
“People love it now, but pulling that off required Delta AV. We needed an experienced team with their level of dedication to do things right.”
