Here are the Winners of Commercial Integrator's Integration Awards 2018

Tight deadlines, centralized management, simple controls, wow factor, future-proof technology… commercial integration firms encountered all the usual suspects on the checklists of the AV integration projects they entered into Commercial Integrator’s annual Integration Awards program. For their customers (and bottom lines), the 45 submitted audio visual installations were all winners in their own ways.

CI’s panel of judges had the unenviable task of whittling the entries in more than a dozen awards categories down to those that simply stood out as the best, and came away with 14 more than worthy winners in categories of: corporate campus, small office, meeting room, higher ed, bars & restaurants, casino, government, health care, health club/fitness center, hotel/hospitality, house of worship, large venue, museum, and retail.

“Each year it seems like the Integration Awards get more competitive across each of our vertical market categories,” says Tom LeBlanc, CI editor-in-chief.

“As the editors of Commercial Integrator and TechDecisions scour AV integration projects submitted by integration firms, we try not to get hung up on the ‘wow factor.’ Instead we’re focused on the context of the applications. What were the challenges that the customer brought to the integration firm? Were those challenges solved? Does it seem like a solution that has legs? Is there a plan in place for continuing to support the customer?

“The judges, we’ll admit, had some healthy debates and there could easily have been multiple winners in each category. That being said, the winners of the 2018 commercial Integration Awards should be extremely product of creating solutions to customers real problems. That’s what integrators are meant to do.”

Indeed, the customers of this year’s Integration Awards recipients are the ones that came out on top. It’s a good sign that exceptional experiences are being met all the time in the audio visual installations industry.