NEC Display Solutions customer installation – Corporate

London Business School – The Sammy Ofer Centre

A cutting edge learning environment

Shaping a new generation of business leaders, the London Business School chose NEC projection and displays to support its teaching programmes. 24/7 reliability is crucial to ensure that learning support is not compromised to technology support.

It’s location at the heart of the business capital of the world has helped to define and shape the London Business School for 50 years. Consistently ranked as one of the best business schools in the world, delivering an education to students, organisations and corporate partners, the LBS continues to have a profound impact on the way the world does business.

The Challenge

A Grade II listed building, once the Old Marylebone Town Hall, is now regenerated into the Sammy Ofer Centre, providing seminar rooms, study areas, social space and lecture theatres, increasing available teaching space by 70% at the London Business School.

Purchased by the LBS in 2013 and benefiting from a landmark £25m donation from the Idan and Batia Ofer Foundation, the London Business School embarked on a major fundraising campaign to fund the redevelopment.

Our task is to sensitively restore and convert this magnificent building into a modern, state-of-the-art education centre to be enjoyed by our entire School community. A place where we can come together to test, share and apply new ideas and new ways of thinking.

The NEC Solution

The School’s main campus at Sussex Place already benefits from NEC laser projection technology in its lecture theatres. Tom Bulatovic, AV infrastructure and Media Services Manager at LBS looked to NEC to again provide the visual technology at the new Sammy Ofer Centre.

The NEC laser projectors have proved to be extremely reliable and the picture quality is as good today as it was when the projectors were first installed. We have also quantified a considerable cost saving by not having to keep a stock of lamps.

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Part of the redevelopment includes the construction of a new teaching block housing six lecture theatres, a library, 35 seminar rooms, offices, staff and faculty suites, student lounge, broadcast facilities and an alumni centre.

Management of the project was awarded to GV Multimedia who specified, designed and installed this stand out project.

NEC was chosen as a key supplier to this project very early on due to their fantastic range of products, simple integration and high performance,’ says Kristian Cutting, Deputy Managing Director at GV Multimedia. ‘In order to ensure the most up to date technology we waited for the very latest release of the new P Series displays.

Four of the lecture theatres benefit from twin NEC PX803UL, 8000 ANSI lumen laser projectors mounted on powered hoists enabling access to connections and content receivers. With two sources, lecturers can project their teaching material side by side in a dual display configuration. In addition, dual 65” NEC X651UHDSST ShadowSense touch displays provide a huge interactive canvas, an extension to a touch screen on the lectern enabling the lecturer to annotate via either surface.

Each of the seminar rooms and study spaces are equipped with new generation NEC P Series large format displays in a size appropriate to the size of the room. Connectivity is managed via the HDMI port and students are able to link to the display using their own ‘BYOD’ device. The Boardroom is equipped with a huge 98” P Series display and all of the displays benefit from external NEC speakers to provide premium audio quality.

The LBS has installed information displays throughout the site to provide communications and wayfinding using the NEC P and V Series displays with content management by TriplePlay.

We are heavy users of AV equipment; our timetable continues throughout the day and late into the evening for our post graduate programmes,’ say Bulatovic. ‘Consistent, reliable, 24/7 performance is business critical so we appreciate the build quality of the NEC products to support our teaching programmes and keep maintenance to a minimum.

The Result

Refurbishing The Sammy Ofer Centre allows the LBS to extend their teaching and research, and offer crucial flexibility to invest in improvements across its original campus. The next stage will see upgrades to the technology provision on the main Sussex Place campus which is just a short walk from the Sammy Ofer centre.

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The flourishing development of this prestigious project is testament to the close relationship between all parties involved; we enjoy a long-standing partnership with GV Multimedia,’ says Helen Sheldrake, sales manager at NEC Display Solutions. ‘Partnerships are very important to NEC where integrity and transparency are the key to a successful outcome and I am very proud of our involvement at the London Business School.

The provision of a cutting edge learning environment means the London Business School can continue to grow and prosper in the future, creating new generations of leaders who can address the challenges of business and wider society.