How a Major Insurance Company Transformed 8 Meeting Rooms With a Full AV Fit-Out
- Chris Gore
- 8 hours ago
- 6 min read
Project: 2nd Floor AV Fit-Out
Scope: 6 medium meeting rooms, 2 large meeting rooms, IPTV areas, room booking panels
Timescale: 6–10 weeks
Technology: Cisco Webex, Samsung 4K Displays, Crestron, Biamp, Extron
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Author: Chris Gore| Co Founder of SPOR Group
Published April, 2026
The Problem With Meeting Rooms That Just About Work
You know the meeting room. The one where someone spends the first five minutes fiddling with cables. The one where remote participants sound like they're calling from a wind tunnel. The one where the screen sharing works, eventually, if you unplug and replug three times and say a small prayer.
For a large insurance company operating across multiple floors, this wasn't a minor inconvenience. It was a daily drain on productivity, a consistent source of frustration, and when it happened in front of clients, a reputational risk.
They had eight meeting rooms on a single floor that needed a complete rethink. Not a patch job. A proper, standardised, future-ready meeting room AV fit-out. That's where SPOR came in. You can read the full case study here
How Did We Do This Meeting Room AV Fit Out
Before we get into what was installed, it's worth understanding the scope of what was needed. The 2nd floor of this insurance company's office had:
Six medium meeting rooms
Two large meeting rooms
IPTV and cable TV distribution areas
Room booking panels across the floor
Each space had its own demands. Medium rooms needed video conferencing setups that didn't require a degree in AV to operate. Large rooms needed enterprise-grade systems that could handle presentations, internal all-hands, and client-facing sessions without breaking a sweat. And across all of it, the goal was consistency, one experience, regardless of which room you walked into.
The other non-negotiable? It all had to align with the organisation's existing IT and security requirements. No rogue hardware. No workarounds. Clean integration from day one. Like most projects, this one had its complications. We share some of those project complications in our "Day in the life" video where I take you as a fly on the wall with me for one day running SPOR. Check that video out here
The Technology Stack
The solution wasn't built around what was cheapest. It was built around what would actually work, reliably, day after day, without hand-holding. Here's what was deployed:
Cisco Webex Room Systems
The backbone of the entire fit-out. Cisco Webex Room Systems were installed across all six medium rooms and both large meeting rooms. These are dedicated video conferencing systems — not a laptop-dependent setup, not a consumer-grade workaround. Enterprise hardware, designed for exactly this environment.
The result? Staff can walk in, tap a button, and be in a meeting within seconds. No cables. No configuration. No 'can everyone hear me?' for three minutes before anything happens. Why Cisco and not other platforms? Well, we break down a comparison here.
Samsung Commercial 4K Displays
Professional commercial displays, not repurposed consumer TVs. Samsung's commercial 4K screens deliver the kind of visual clarity that makes a difference when you're sharing detailed documents, running presentations for senior stakeholders, or joining a video call where you actually need to see people's faces properly.
Commercial displays are also built for extended daily use in a way consumer screens aren't. Brighter panels. More durable. Designed to run all day, every day.
Biamp Ceiling Microphones and DSP
Audio is the most underrated part of any meeting room setup. You can have the best screen in the world, if the audio is poor, the meeting falls apart. Biamp ceiling microphones, combined with Digital Signal Processing (DSP), capture speech clearly from across the room without the awkwardness of a tabletop mic everyone has to lean towards.
DSP handles the processing side, filtering out background noise, managing echo, ensuring the audio being transmitted to remote participants is clean and intelligible. For an insurance company where conversations can be sensitive and detail matters, this wasn't optional. It was essential.
Crestron Room Booking Panels
Room availability shouldn't be a mystery. Crestron booking panels were integrated with the calendar system, giving staff real-time visibility of which rooms are free, the ability to book on the spot, and automated management of room utilisation across the floor.
It also solves the perennial problem of people 'reserving' rooms they never show up for. The panels can release unoccupied bookings automatically, freeing up space for people who actually need it.
Extron AV Switching and Signal Distribution
Extron handles the behind-the-scenes infrastructure, switching and distributing audio and video signals reliably between sources and displays. It's not the glamorous part of an AV install, but it's what stops everything from falling over when someone needs to switch inputs mid-presentation.
Chief Manufacturing Mounting Solutions
Professional mounting for displays and AV hardware. Secure, clean, and correctly positioned for the room dimensions. It sounds basic, but the difference between a properly mounted display at the right height and angle versus one that's slightly off is noticed in every single meeting.
IPTV and Cable TV Distribution
Selected areas on the floor were fitted with IPTV and cable TV distribution, allowing live TV to be pulled through to designated spaces without additional infrastructure. Useful for break-out areas, reception spaces, or areas where live market data or news feeds are a day-to-day requirement in an insurance environment.
Centralised Device Monitoring and Network Integration
All systems were integrated into the organisation's network with centralised device monitoring in place. This means the IT team has visibility across every room, they can identify issues before they become problems, push updates remotely, and maintain security alignment with corporate IT standards.
How the Project Was Delivered
The fit-out was completed within a 6–10 week project window, a realistic timescale for a deployment of this scope when you're working in an occupied office environment and can't just shut down an entire floor.
The SPOR delivery process followed a structured approach:
Design and specification — scoping the right technology for each room type and use case
Integration — installation and commissioning of all hardware and software systems
Training — ensuring staff could actually use the systems confidently from day one
Monitoring — centralised device management put in place from go-live
User training is the part that often gets skipped in AV deployments. It gets treated as an afterthought, a quick walkthrough handed off to whoever happens to be in the room at the time. The result is that staff default back to old habits because the new system feels unfamiliar. That didn't happen here. Training was built into the project scope, not bolted on at the end.
What Changed After the Fit-Out
The practical outcomes from a deployment like this are fairly straightforward to measure if you know what to look for:
Meetings start on time, because the technology works first time, every time
Audio and video quality is consistent across all eight rooms
Remote participants are properly integrated into meetings, not an afterthought
Room booking is visible and managed, reducing wasted space
IT has full visibility and can manage devices centrally without physically visiting rooms
The less tangible outcome, but arguably the more important one, is that staff stopped thinking about the technology. That's the goal. When AV works as it should, it disappears into the background. People focus on the meeting, not the setup.
For a 2nd floor operation running eight meeting rooms with a mix of internal and client-facing activity, that reliability isn't a luxury. It's a basic operational requirement.
Key Takeaways for IT Directors and Facilities Managers
If you're responsible for meeting room technology across a multi-floor or multi-site estate, there are a few things worth taking from this project:
Standardisation reduces friction. When every room works the same way, training overhead drops and staff confidence goes up. Mixed environments, where every room is slightly different, create confusion and drive shadow IT workarounds. Standardisation is easy when you understand prices of rooms. We publish our prices with an easy to use AV estimator. Get an AV price within 60 seconds without speaking to any sales person here
Audio is not secondary. Budget for proper ceiling microphone and DSP solutions. Cutting costs here is cutting the quality of every remote meeting on your estate.
Monitoring needs to be built in, not added later. Centralised device monitoring means you catch issues before they disrupt meetings. Reactive support, waiting for someone to raise a ticket — is a far more expensive model in the long run.
User training is part of the deployment. Not a two-minute handover. Proper, structured training that ensures adoption from day one.
Technology should align with IT and security requirements from the outset. Not be retrofitted to meet them after the fact.
Thinking About an AV Fit-Out for Your Office?
Whether you're looking at a single floor or a full estate, the approach is the same, understand the use cases, specify the right technology, deliver consistently, and put monitoring in place so you're not flying blind.
If you want to understand what a fit-out like this might cost for your space, our AV pricing tool gives you an honest, transparent estimate based on your room types and requirements.
Or explore more guides and case studies here
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