Check Out This One of a Kind Installation in Boston Boardroom

Coverys is an innovative medical professional liability insurance and services provider dedicated to helping its policyholders and clients anticipate, identify and manage risk to reduce errors, eliminate inefficiency and improve outcomes. AM Best, the nation’s most recognized insurance rating organization, has identified Coverys among the largest medical professional liability insurance providers in the country. Coverys has also enjoyed being named to the Ward’s 50 list of top performing P&C insurers each year since 2010.

With such an impressive track record, it’s important for the company to maintain a standard of excellence in every facet, including facility. The company recently decided to renovate its corporate boardroom in Boston, MA. Coverys called on AV Helpdesk, an audiovisual design consultant based in Boston that provides design engineering services, software development and AV management to customers, to help with the project. AV Helpdesk has a bit of a unique structure that differs from most systems integrators or consultants you’ll come across.

“In our model, we’re AV consultants but we engineer everything to a T,” says Steve Grace, Principal at AV Helpdesk. “We produce all the build-ready documents. We pick and select every single component, part, piece and adapter. We put out a bid-spec that’s as detailed as what the integrator would normally deliver in the end, and then our bids come in right on top of each other – within 5 percent of each other almost every time, and our budgets are within 5 to 10 percent in every project because we do the engineering.”

Since the location of the boardroom was in such a globally accessible spot as Boston, the company has frequent meeting with clients from overseas and also holds global board meetings in the space. Due to the pre-existence of the space, as well as multiple floor-to-ceiling windows on two of the four walls, surface area for the display system they envisioned was limited. AV Helpdesk provided details on front-projection systems and a variety of video wall solutions. However, the consultant pushed hardest for a SiliconCore sub-2mm LED video wall, which is very atypical for corporate boardrooms at this point.

“My understanding is that there aren’t very many boardrooms out there with LED walls yet,” says Grace. “I asked around other consultants and manufacturers – if it wasn’t the first it was one of the first to be used in that application. They’re usually in lobbies, not in boardrooms.”

To make the LED wall work, it was imperative that sight lines remain 6 to 8 feet away from the screen so as not to be distracted by the pixels. That meant getting creative with the architects.

Now, typically the architects hire a consultant, and when the consultant offers an opinion it is up the architect to bring that to the client. With AV Helpdesk’s business model, they were able to have an equal say in considerations at the early stages of the project. They worked together to come up with a horseshoe table that provided spacing so that the closest person to the screen is still about 12 feet back from the wall.

“It looks spectacular. They’re blown away by the image quality,” says Grace. “With the brightness in that space – all the windows on two sides stay fully open. They get this giant image – 8.5 by 11 feet. They get high picture quality, and they get to leave the shades open. That technology, in all the displays I’ve done in 26 years, it’s amazing. It definitely became the star of the show.”

The architect that designed the table did so in such a way that participants maintain sight contact while still having the proper view of the wall. There are 31 seats in total, and a steel cantilever substructure eliminates vertical supports throughout the entire seating area. Integrated into the table edge are modular connection panels with electrical power outlet, data jack, USB power port and AV connection – one of each for every seated participant. The electronics are built discreetly into the area underneath the marble work surface, so power supplies and such stay off the table. Motorized microphones sit flush in the table, appear when needed, and retract when not in use. Cisco MX audio and video conferencing are integrated into the system. Crestron touch panels round out the system.

Since the completion of the corporate boardroom, Coverys has decided to revamp the entire floor, and then decided on the entire building, and has since decided to renovate all sites globally. AV Helpdesk will be assisting on this initiative moving forward.

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